Everything is a bit much

I tell you what everything is a bit? Just at the moment? From where I’m standing? It’s a bit much, is what it is. Chances are, it’s a bit much for you too. It’s a bit much, I have recently discovered, for almost everybody.

Public Service Announcement: Let’s overthrow the system. What system? And with what energy? Okay, good point. Small systems; little to no energy. Let’s micro-rebel! In fact, I see you out there already, you tiny rebels with your tiny rebellions. Keep it up!

Obviously what we really need is a bit of a family meeting, as a global community, to recalibrate things according to the degree to which we are all experiencing that feeling of everything being too much. It’s quite clear though, that should such a meeting even be possible, a certain portion of the meeting (say, about 1% of those present) might suddenly become uncharacteristically quiet, look at their devices - “is that the time?”, “got to take this one sorry” - and yank a golden lever which drops them shockingly away via an inflatable fun slide into a trouble-free existence. The slide will have heated seating and a sound system that costs more than the cleaning budget at Parliament House. Sorry. Got a bit distracted by the metaphor there. The point is, this kind of social reckoning does not (although I shall still daydream) appear to be imminent, so, well, we can only control what we can control.

And you’re already doing it. I see you rebelling. I see the nature strip out the front of your house exploding with insane plants and weird succulents; forests of vengeful survival resisting the dominant paradigm with a a stubborn, unbecoming beauty that takes over the street, stops children in their tracks, and enables middle-aged women like myself to snip the tiniest bit off the top and take it home to propagate. Yes! Spread the rebellion! Huzzah! Stick it to the boring council and the stupid reality and the visual normality of the street. Suffer in yer jocks, lawns.

I see you going to art galleries. Sure, they’re cutting the arts. Undermining writers’ festivals. Murdering arts budgets. But I see you under trees reading books. You could be toiling to make more money! You could be cleaning your house to attain perfection according to the expectations of the system! But no! You read and you go to libraries and you chuckle at podcasts and you visit art galleries until your feet are so tired you sigh the great art gallery sigh and you head outside, blinking, into the sunlight. And maybe two days later, something from the art gallery slides sideways into your thinking about something else and you are enlightened, value-added, levelled up into a new and better self and it cost you nothing but a sigh.

I see your friendships! Ha! Getting together like recalcitrant scallywags, prioritising giggling. Confessing worries through tear-goggles that feel tight in your chest and hot in your throat and then free, suddenly, shared, suddenly, dissipated somehow like the fog on a window as the sun sets in.

You scoundrels! Heading, despite it all, despite everything, for nature for heaven’s sake! Pushing through the parks that could be commerce. Clambering up the mountains that could be highways. Face-first in the surf with you and you’re underwater then, aren’t you, the sound and the pull of the water and later, the taste of it, the smell of it in your hair.

And you’ve recruited the animals. The cats are in on it. The dogs. Looking over at you. They’re not asking with words, for who needs words. They’re asking with the whole of their faces. And what are you answering? What is it you say to these creatures with whom you commune? “Yes!” you confirm warmly. “Hello”, you delight. “Do you have tootsies?”, you may ask. You’re finding, in this wordless, inter-species loving playfulness, a mutual understanding. Maybe you’re a good boy. Maybe you’re okay. You do indeed have tootsies. And this is as meaningful and as ongoing and as strong as everything else.

Everything else is too much. But this? This stuff is yours. It’s ours. This is the stuff we can control.  Reaching out and touching a tootsie. Yelling hello at a passing corella and flipping the bird at the news. We’re out here, remember, everywhere, fighting the good fight. And yes, we need to schedule that family meeting, but in the meantime, lets take it one succulent at a time.