On Letting Go

1.

I spot him on the way out of the apartment complex, this nondescript man with hair more salt than pepper, bent over, forcing a note into my letterbox. I know what this note will say before I read it: he’s been coming by like clockwork. 

It’ll be a strongly worded notice printed on officiously Official Census Stationary. It’ll say: FINAL NOTICE, though it’ll be the third FINAL NOTICE I’ve received in as many days. It’ll remind me, again, that I must - must - complete my census for this property, that there is still time for me to do so, but that it must be done ASAP, or else. And then, scrawled in blue pen at the bottom: RON, my census officer, and the date and time, underlined twice for posterity.

I hang back as Ron struggles to insert the card. Finally, he manages to cram it in and rushes off, a little worse for wear. Without opening the mailbox, I insert my middle finger (appropriate) into the slot and shimmy the card back out again, barely giving a second thought as I toss it in the direction of the recycling bin.

Thwonk.

The card skims the edge of the bin and butterflies down to the ground, coming to rest in some sort of puddle so that the word RON stares up at me, accusatory. I want to stalk off without a second thought like some badass in a music video, but my legs won’t move properly, and I fucked up the landing anyway, so. There’s an off-yellow stain quickly overtaking the name on the card. I reach down to whisk it up and out as the liquid surrounds him.

I want to not care, but maybe I care too much - about the wrong things, anyway. I mean, what kind of person chooses to work as a census cop? For all I know, Ron could be a rapist or a murderer - they’re always the unsuspecting ones, aren’t they? - and I just got my hands dirty to protect his name. 

2.

A pretty successful tactic for circumventing anxiety is this: focus on what you can control, and let go of the rest. This is not a new tactic, or one I can claim to have invented, but it’s served me pretty well. I can control where I go, what I do, when I leave the house, if I meet anyone, if I sleep with anyone, if I linger in the fresh produce section pressing each avocado ‘till I find the perfect one or if just grab the nearest, sanitise it, and run out of the supermarket. For now that’ll have to do.

I’ve never been one to do things by halves - so I’ve moved interstate to live alone for the first time in my life. The last time(s) I lived in Sydney, I was here for education. I spent as much time out of home as in it, brought together with a group of peers and a wider Purpose that united us, for the semester, anyway. Not like employment isn’t a purpose - quite the opposite! - but it’s a different ball-game when you’re no longer allowed to leave your house. I’ve watched pandemic numbers skyrocket impossibly high in Sydney, then fall and begin to stabilise, and I’ve watched the numbers rise and keep rising in Melbourne, and felt bad for escaping when I did.

I can control my surroundings. I can control the type of furniture that I buy. I can control the imagined layout of my living space, and how that imagined layout changes each time a new piece of furniture arrives and it doesn’t have the imagined dimensions that I’ve imagined. I can control my frustration when yet another piece of furniture is delayed, seemingly indefinitely, and when the only place I’ve got to sit is the floor, the bed, or the ergonomic desk chair. 

I can control what I cook, and though I haven’t yet learned to cook for one, I’m slowly getting better. I can control having the same meal four nights in a row by learning to spice things up each night: maybe this time I’ll have it cold, maybe this time with dill, maybe this time I’ll eat it with chopsticks, just to mix it up, y’know?

I can control what I do with my nights. I can control whether I sit around in my empty apartment or whether I get out there and become the kind of person who runs, apparently, because endorphins are nice. I can control when I decide to vomit some words out onto the page, and I can control when I decide to watch Sex and the City with my ex-housemates, more like family, and switch off my brain while four white women at brunch discuss strangely conservative views about sex and pass condiments around the breakfast table, never actually consuming anything. 

I can control when I send a friend a meme, and I can limit myself to one a day. Probably. I can cherry-pick the ones I want to send and not mindlessly forward them on without thinking. I can just say “hey I’m grateful for you and I value you” instead of sending a screenshot from twitter that just says “YEAH SEX IS COOL BUT HAVE YOU EVER MADE YR THERAPIST LAUGH?” and a comment that just says “same." 

I can control when I see the people I love and when I tell them I love them, even if it’s sometimes through FaceTime, which is similar to Zoom but doesn’t have the same heaviness attached to it. I can control when I hold on. I can control when I let go.

Another pretty successful tactic for circumventing anxiety would be, I think, abolishing Zoom calls altogether. 

3.

About writing, punk poet and provocateur Kathy Acker (now dead), wrote: “One thing I do is stick a vibrator up my cunt and start writing -- writing from the point of orgasm and losing control of the language and seeing what that's like.”

I’ve been interested in ways to shake up my writing practice - whatever that practice is at this point, I honestly don’t know - and now seems as good a time as ever. Only, I’ve different anatomy, male orgasms are less intense, over quicker, and generally need at least one participatory hand. As I sit and I write, the ghost of Kathy or the ghost of my past appears (they’re interchangeable at this point) and whispers: Go on. Mix it up. Live a little.

I’ve tried writing on different substances across the years, just for shits and giggles. I’ve tried dextroamphetamine (‘legal’ speed used for the treatment of ADHD and narcolepsy, recreationally used to induce focus with a nice tinge of euphoria). It’s a workhorse drug, helpful once you have the idea and the only thing standing in your way is the practicality of bringing the words to life. I’ve tried marijuana: I’m good for maybe twenty minutes max before succumbing to a need for baked goods and stupid internet memes. But oh, those twenty minutes! Your brain free associates, bringing unexpected ideas together, and isn’t that fun? I’ve tried alcohol, and we know how that went - a few years of messy plays beaten into shape, some of the best and worst stuff I’ve ever written, and then a car crash and rehab. Not so good.

When Kathy Acker taught a class on writing, she told her students to not let anyone tell them how to write. When I taught a class on writing, I told my students much the same. This was kind of just for the thrill of a knockoff Dead Poet’s Society moment, and kind of because I agreed: I don’t think writing can necessarily be taught. I said: this class won’t make you a playwright; you’re a playwright because you’re in this class. You showed up. That’s enough. My job is to help you cultivate your voice: your ‘you-ness’. (Although, you might want to follow that ‘you-ness’ up with some actual writing.) Of course, I then contradicted myself by teaching 12 weeks of an assigned syllabus, but this hopefully disavowed my students of any ideas around a simple A-to-B transmission of knowledge.

Meanwhile, about creation, Andy Warhol - a contemporary of Acker - said: “don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” 

In this vein, I’ve come back to this ‘online memoir’ form maybe because it’s easy to do when there’s a pandemic ravaging the country. It means you don’t have to be in the same room as anyone but yourself. You can put it out there and people can read at their own leisure, or ignore it, whatever works, I guess. I’ve come back to this form because there’s something underneath the surface, I think - I’m not sure what, and I’m trying to work it out.

Another homework assignment, courtesy of Kathy Acker: write a piece in which you have sex with the most disgusting person in your family. Maybe I’m all good for advice, actually.

4.

I spy him again, this time as I’m heading back from the supermarket, perpetually wrestling with my letterbox. I scrape my shoe as I walk past and he spins around, bolt straight, and locks eyes with me.

“Afternoon,” I say, my voice foreign in my throat: down a few octaves, gruff, the faggot’s attempt at camouflage. I can see something else in my mailbox, but I push on. I’ll get it later.

Ron says nothing in return, just keeps staring me down, like he’s thinking of asking me for ID. A beat. Then, he curtly nods, turns away, and departs down the driveway. I run, skip, into the complex and up the stairs, the circulation to my hands disappearing by the second. What a rush.

5.

The thing about Kathy Acker, about so many writers and artists, is that life wasn’t meant to be at 100 all of the time. Life is... you know, it’s life, and you need time to eat and sleep and cultivate relationships and take in art and culture and trash and be influenced by the world around you. Anyone who doesn’t take this time is probably dead or a social pariah.

(As an aside, this reminds me of that dating-app cliche (verbatim taken from several options, largely on Pinterest): “I don't want small talk. Text me, and without saying hello, tell me why you got so angry at your sister this morning. Call me when I'm half asleep and tell me why you believe in God. Tell me about the first time you saw your dad cry. Tell me everything. I don't want someone who wants to talk about the weather.” Honestly, if someone I was dating called me after midnight to talk about God or their crying father, I’d ask what drugs they were on. And probably end it right there. Sleep is important.)

I know all this to be true, or I know all this to be as true as anything else I’ve experienced, but at the same time I can’t shake that feeling of time passing. Of things running out. Maybe it’s where the world seems to be, now: more distinctly on the brink of destruction than ever before. Maybe it’s just that we’re more aware of it.

My job at the moment has me engaging with Australian artists like never before, and I’m still shocked at the amount of us: the talent, the diversity, the dedication, the talent. For a while I found it depressing, a comment on the underfunded nature of Australian art - but somewhere along the line this depression evolved into awe. Like: there are that many people carving out careers for themselves and making exciting stuff, and I get to help them, in some small way. If they can do it, so can you. Gosh, that’s wonderful.

6.

In 2019 I completed a year-long writing residency with the City of Melbourne in order to draft a manuscript about my experiences: largely, getting hit by a car, acquiring a disability, renavigating the world. The trauma of an accident, and what comes after.

I worked on it pretty solidly for that year, but found myself stalling: caught in the details of the thing, in my own psychology, searching for myself and for meaning in the lead up of 2014. My actions, obsessions, wondering at what point the accident became the inevitable conclusion to budding alcoholism, addiction, and full-blown anxiety. I wondered because I didn’t know myself: I didn’t have meaning, I didn’t have understanding, even five years on, and if I could make sense of it then maybe I could let it go.

Of course, some things have meaning, and some things don’t. There were - are - so many versions of What Happened in my head that somehow I’ve robbed it of all significance and imbued it all with way too much significance. Depending on who I’m talking to, it might be a witty anecdote told over a drink, a quick crib notes before a a hook-up, or a way to forge a stronger connection with someone new. I’m learning, now, that my focus on ‘meaning’ was probably the wrong angle - the lead-up is important to me alone, mainly, but it’s exactly that: the lead-up to the real meat of the story, the part where bodies fly through the air and hit the ground and relearn how to walk and talk and smile and make art, sometimes. 

I stopped writing, and now some 70 pages of ‘anxiety spiral and substance abuse’ just sit on my desktop. Maybe one day I’ll go back to it. Maybe I won’t. The angle should’ve been just that: the trauma (only a little), and what comes after.

7.

The last time I see him, I don’t: just another note, same deal as before, this time slid calmly into the slot, left crisp and uncrumpled. Something was different this time.

This time, I take out the note.

This time, I flip it over and read the text on the back. It says: “Nobody home on 10 August, 2021? Go to abs.gov.au/census and complete a note of absence.”

Simple. Right. Probably could’ve done that already.

Upstairs, I type in the URL, and follow the directions. I’m ready to give proof I’ve already filled the thing out, to defend my honour, to prove I’m not a liar, but they don’t even ask. Just tick the NO box, you’re on my way. No more Ron. No more clockwork.

I hit enter.

I let go.