I stood behind my kiosk and called out, 
Programs! £5! 
And one of the other ushers stood behind his kiosk and called out,
Drinks! Various prices! 
And we chuckled because it was silly
And he said
I’m determined to be your inspiration today
And he was 
Because sometimes all you need is
Someone else who is willing to smile
And share the ridiculous. 

The end. 

Whilst I was running in the park
A photographer had stopped on the grass
And was looking up at a tree
A kite had been left in the empty branches
Looking like an overgrown leaf
Like the tree had mustered the last of its autumnal energy
Combined all its palette into one gigantuan effort 
And pushed out a fabulous frond in bright technicolor glory
 
And with my eyes opened 
I later spotted a blossom tree in full bloom 
In the middle of winter! 
It was so pretty
So unexpected! 
 
And I gave silent thanks
To the photographer
Whose eyes I hadn't even met
For helping me to see 
Close up
 
The end

There is something comforting in the fact
That every day
A show is being performed
The people are singing
Masquerades are on parade
Children are revolting
 
Somewhere around the world
The story of a boy band is being told
In neat
Introduction, climax, denouement form
With feel good songs
And slick choreography 
 
Every day
The performers are singing and dancing
The costumers re-hanging shirts and wigs and dresses
The stage hands striking and re-setting props 
And getting ready to do it all again
 
No show is ever the same twice
The audience is always different
Sometimes a line is dropped
A prop forgotten
The cast slightly shuffled
 
And every day
There is someone in the audience
Watching it all for the first time
Laughing, sighing, gasping
And walking out of the theatre
Feeling happier
Feeling uplifted 
 
And I get to meet that someone 
Eight times a week
And I get to watch it all
Eight times a week
And feel comforted that 
Every day a show is being performed. 
 
The end. 

Yesterday I made a pact 
To find one thing a day
That was inspiring or
Lovely or
"Magical, beautiful, delightful" 
And today
I started
One a day 
 
It was standing on the train
And listening to strangers talk about musicals
And smiling at them
Because I knew what they were talking about
And then seeing them in the theatre an hour later
And laughing with them because we recognized each other
And they realized why I had smiled
 
It was receiving a message from a dear friend
Knowing he is on the same page
Several thousand miles away
 
It was coming home on the train
And being so engrossed in my book
The journey felt quick
 
It was getting home from a long day
And opening a new hand soap for the bathroom
And the smell being so delicious 
It reminded me to breathe deeply
 
It was hearing my love’s voice on the phone
 
It was being on the lookout for things
Inspiring, beautiful, and lovely
That reminded me to let go 
To not get caught up in the negative
And not be bogged down
 
It was writing about the nice things
And recalling, that despite a long day at work,
There were actually
Numerous moments of lovely 
And taking pause
And breathing deeply
And saying
Okay. 

Arriving back in London 
After three weeks in a cabin in the woods
Is an assault on the senses
The advertising
The people 
The rush. 

Within ten minutes of getting off the plane
I could feel 
Depression
Anxiety
Rising 
 
And on a day where I feel bleary because I spent the night flying across the Atlantic
To arrive in a city that, try as I might, doesn't feel like home
To travel in peak hour and feel like the stereotype of a
Sardine in a can/rat on a treadmill/tiny insignificant speck
To see all those miserable people! 
To stand in the shower and sob because I was back
To feel like the cabin in the woods was a dream
To miss my love across the ocean 
 
I had a thought. 
I don’t want to get sucked in to the misery 
I don’t want to be hardened by the city
I don’t want to feel helpless hopeless and horrified
 
I want to see beyond the billboards and concrete tunnels 
And hear something other than
I can’t/It’s too hard/it’s so tough 
 
So here is a promise to myself
Everyday
I will write about something inspiring 
Something magical, beautiful, delightful,
Just plain old nice
And hope 
It makes a difference.
 
The end. 

Mary Poppins came into my life
Because she floated daily
Into our loungeroom
The VHS watched and rewound and re-watched
So endlessly 
That the tape eventually died 
There has always been Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane
The toys have always flown into their cupboards with a click
Julie Andrews has always been Mary Poppins 
 
Years later 
On an excursion for Writing History
A pre-honours class in research and writing
The librarian at the State Library has pulled out a stack of papers 
Random examples of the items held there
The letters of P.L. Travers 
Did you know that the author of the Mary Poppins books,
Upon which the movie was based,
Was an Australian? 
That there were disagreements between the
original author and Disney
(Corporation betraying the
Writer) 
 
Graduation, a world trip, heart break, meditation, later
I was running in a park
And found a statue of Mary Poppins
(Unveiled by my aunt!) 
To commemorate that P.L. Travers had lived in Sydney
Just a few blocks from my house 
 
Another time
Listening to Mornings with Margaret
A fascinating interview with Valerie Lawson
About the biography she has written 
The thought, “I must read that”
Filed away and forgotten 
 
Later, in London 
Wandering through the library 
And Valerie Lawson’s Mary Poppins She Wrote 
Sitting there on the shelf
 
And from the woods of Virginia I read
P.L. Travers
Never identified as Australian
Had left and, but for one short visit, never returned
Felt New York was her spiritual home 
Hated the movie 
Never found love
Never found peace
Was eternally searching 
 
Knowing the postscript is delicious 
And heart-breaking
And joyous 
 
Where do I fit? 
I’m no P.L. Travers
I haven’t even been published yet
And yet something stirs
Identifies 
 
And today,
The sky is blue.
 
The end.

This is my third Christmas away from “home”
(I.e. the place where I spent the first 23 Christmases of my life)
With technology and an internet connection
No one seems so far away 
I can instantaneously see pictures of my family
Celebrating
It’s both a relief and heart breaking 
A relief to be away from the stress of family politics
Heart breaking to be away from the familiarity (ha!) of it all. 
 
Until I went traveling 
All my Christmases had been celebrated in summer
Seafood and outdoor lunches and cricket
And then my first white Christmas
Spent on Nantucket
Candles in the windows
A delicious chill in the air 
Suddenly the traditions all made sense
The lights, the roast, the warmth of it all
 
And I love being overseas
The thrill of being able to walk through Covent Garden 
And hearing a beautiful soprano voice
Laura Abella 
Filtering up through the rush
The smell of mulled wine and chilly air 
The rustle of people 
Laughing at the giant sparkling Rudolph outside the Royal Opera House
The massive Lego advent calendar opposite the
Actor’s Church
The sparkle of lights in London 
 
And arriving at my love’s house
After 16 hours of travel
And finding he has strung fairy lights across the entire front porch
Last year he came to London
And we had Christmas dinner in a pub
Friends from Turkey, Greece, America, and Australia
Combining and sharing and making our own traditions
We spent Christmas Day eating food and watching movies and the entirety of Firefly
It was lovely
This year we’re in America with his parents
And we’re going to see a movie
And eat Chinese 
And enjoy the quiet
 
And wonder what next year will bring
And hope to remember to be mindful
And bring peace and love and light and joy 
No matter the day of the year 
And thinking of all the people I know across the globe
And wondering how they are,
And, no matter what they’re doing
Or how they celebrate,
Wishing them a very merry Christmas, now. 

Sitting in my robes in Royal Festival Hall
Graduating with a Masters
I feel like I'm six years old playing make believe
The robe keeps slipping off my shoulders
The ridiculous hat keeps sliding down my forehead
It doesn't feel real
This past year. I still can't quite put it into words.

I thought that with my Masters
I would be amazing,
But I still don't feel like I am.
I still can't belt an E
I have worse stage fright now than when I started
I want to be brilliant yesterday
I want to be wonderful super fantastic coolness remarkable
Right now!
What does it mean exactly to "have potential"?
What do they see that I, still, after all this, can't access?

What do I want to be when I grow up?
I want to be Mary Poppins and Maureen Johnson and Miss Honey
I want to sing and dance and act and write
What I really want is to play roles I've written myself
Perform my own material
I want to travel
I want own my own house
I want to live in the same continent as my love
I want to sing and be able to write good music
I want the praise of my superiors and my cohort
I want to feel accepted
I want to be happy within myself and proud of my own achievements

What do you do with a BA in English (/History)?
You travel the world
You fall in love
You have visions of living in happily married bliss on the leafy north shore
And you have your heart broken
And you re-assess
And you say "fuck it".
And you leave everything you know and move to a whole other country
Where everything is the same but different
And you deny that you're experiencing culture shock because you are already
Widely Traveled and Older than the average student
And have Life Experience

But really, you're still young
You're still at the beginning
Even though actually you're already part of the way
And actually,
No one knows what is next
No idea.
It's what makes people scared, greedy, snide, arrogant
Everything
Because none of us knows what is next
Yes we can dream, we can plan,
VITAL!

But actually, we have no idea
It doesn't scare me
(actually it does,
but, in this moment, it's liberating)
I can do whatever I choose.
 
The Principal of the School at Graduation
Do something every day that
scares you
Today, again, I choose to blaze a trail of my own
To remember to stop looking around me and totally freaking out that the other peoples paths look better or different to mine
In the words of Elle Woods
I've got to find my way 
In the words of Sondheim
It's our time, breathe it in, worlds to change and worlds to win

What do you do with a BA in English (/History)?
You get an MA in Music Theatre,
You take a deep breath
And -

I grew up with Alanis 
Jagged Little Pill was one of the first albums I ever owned
And seeing her live
For the first time 
Was exhilarating and touching and strange 
It wasn’t just Present Me
Standing in the middle of the crowd
In this vast venue in London
 
It was thirteen year old me
Standing in the large school hall
Singing “Hand in my Pocket” 
And my classmates laughing because I couldn’t swear
And because it was so incredibly, painfully, obvious that I would never, ever, flick a cigarette 
I think it was one of the first times I had ever sung solo
And the lady who had asked me to sing was so encouraging
I went home and re-listened to Jagged Little Pill to see what else I could learn 
 
It was twenty-something year old me
Standing in the practise rooms above the Student Union
And channelling my anger at my ex
So I could sing “You Oughta Know” 
I knew the song well by then
But the lyrics meant more
 
It was twenty-something year old me 
Walking the Camino
And re-calling that Alanis had done some sort of pilgrimage to India 
And had then released Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie 
And listening to it again 
And as I walked 
“Thank u” resonated
And it changed the entire outlook on my life 
 
It was teenage me 
Watching Dogma and seeing Alanis play God
(Controversial because in Christianity, God is always a He) 
And realizing for the first time
God could be female 
 
And then present day me
With all these memories
From time and space almost forgotten 
Standing there surrounded by strangers
And Alanis
As gorgeous and talented as I’d hoped she’d be 
 
But with a twist
This feminine rock chick with biting lyrics and a fierce sound 
Had stage fright.
She barely looked at the audience for the first
two songs
She roamed around the stage
Her amazing hair swishing behind her 
She settled in though
And from the beginning her voice 
Was even more powerful than I thought
Her belt is phenomenal
She didn’t talk between songs
But she would bow to the band members
And call out thank you to the audience
 
She started out with Woman Down 
A call for an end to misogyny 
And throughout the night played 
guardian, receive, all I really want, you oughta know, hand in my pocket, you learn, head over feet, mary jane, ironic, and uninvited. 
The crowd knew every word
We laughed when she updated the lyrics - 
"It's like meeting the man of your
dreams
And meeting his husband". 
 
But the highlight
Was the acapella hidden track from Jagged Little Pill
It was almost divine it was so moving
Still as raw and gut wrenching as it was eighteen years ago
I’ve never been brave/stupid enough to walk into an ex’s house
And lie in his bed and cry all afternoon
But I have dreamt it 
In the dream I walked through his house 
Smelt his cologne 
And both in sleep and awake 
I have sobbed
 
And through it all 
Alanis. 
With her own highs and lows and journies and quests
For forgiveness 
For peace 
For love
For life.
 
The end. 

Careful the things you say,
Children will listen.
Grown-ups too.
Everytime you say something
Someone is listening
And whether you think it or not,
Someone is taking that thing you said
On board.
Even the most fleeting moment,
Like someone calling you a bitch
A little joke, something meant to be funny,
Can sting
Resonate for hours afterwards.
Make you question, wonder, feel small. 

Like the time, seventeen years ago,
When they were doing school photos,
And you sat down, and turned to the photographer
And smiled
And someone in your class yelled out, derisively,
“You’re such a goodie goodie!”.
And you chose to ignore it
Pretend you hadn’t heard
But it still hurt you.
All you had done was sat down.
Or the time, a year or so after the photo incident, 
That girl stole your lunchbox
For no reason, other than to take it
To make fun.
And it made you burn.
And you got up. And took back your lunchbox.
And ate your sandwich or whatever was for lunch that day, and 
Pretended like it never happened.
Because you didn’t want to make a fuss.
 
Or the time, at the height (depth?) of your depression
And you had finally, for the first time in years,
Gotten up and made yourself go for a run,
And you were running down the hill
And a random, perfect stranger said,
“Stop trying, you’re only running down-hill”
And you kept running
Pretended like you hadn’t heard
But you thought,
“F*** You!! Do you know what it took for me to be running?!”
 
Or the time, much later, 
When your own flesh and blood says,
“I’m disowning you, because you traveled unmarried with your boyfriend”, 
And it stings because you don’t feel that that is wrong.
And you get to a point
When you’re in your late twenties
And you’re sick of people being assholes for no good reason.
And you just want to turn around and say like Kate Monster,
“Why can’t people just love each other and get along?”
 
And you take a deep breath.
And you try to remember to not be nasty,
To be a force for good in the world
And say nice things,
And hope it makes a difference
To the one person
Who might be listening.
 
The end.