• So Delightfully Otherworldly Yet Rhythmic

    She was tired of fighting. Every single day was just a monotonous record playing on an endless loop, inspiring in her only the urge to lift the needle and return it to the cradle.

    The train was always this platform. At the other end it was always that platform. The same people got on here and different but also familiar people alighted there. She was disgusted to have realized she knew what day of the week an overweight Greek man liked to wear a particular blue-checkered shirt. It was always Wednesdays. Was that his ‘sexy’ day?

    She lowered herself onto the tracks without any forethought, hesitation or regret and began to walk into the tunnel.

    Here, at last, was something different. She removed her shoes and could feel the damp concrete of the sleepers on the bottom of her feet. The sounds of the world were reproduced through echo here and thus were no longer repetitive and uninteresting. Somewhere there was a drip that was so delightfully otherworldly yet rhythmic that she would happily accept it as a lullaby.

    The sleepers began to vibrate and a shrill squeak pulsed down the rails on either side of her. She had only a few seconds to decide if it was worth going back.

  • A Manner Of Repose Not Often Seen

    She is wearing a yellow dress with an anachronistic bow at the rear, the edges of which can be seen bouncing with a gentle buoyancy with each of her steps. People walk around her as she makes her way down the sidewalk but there is no manifest annoyance on their faces as they do so. She is gracefully parting a sea without disrupting the current.

    The yellow of the dress is only a touch darker than the tan whiteness of her skin. She has the appearance of wealth with none of the pretension. Hers is a manner of repose not often seen on these streets and less often respected by the proletariat.

    It is clear she is not of this world. Yes, earthly matter conspired to make her so but the plane on which she exists does not run parallel with reality so much as it begrudgingly intersects it at certain but random points. A glance away or even a blink and she will be gone, having transcended your world once again.

  • Strong Motion

    I finished Strong Motion over the weekend and liked it better than The Twenty-Seventh City. Franzen can’t help himself when it comes to graphic sex scenes, can he? Everything unfolds predictably but the joy of his writing is in the observation.

    Next up is The Corrections – allegedly his best – as I continue my way through his novels in order.

    Random bits of prose I liked:

    There was a long silence. Louis felt panic at the thought of Renee, who during these minutes when he hadn’t been thinking about her had doubtless made it all the way back to her apartment. Time was passing in her life even as it was standing still in his. She was getting all this time to think while he was not.

    He saw her with a dreamlike clarity that was the same as a dreamlike inability to really see her.

    She had one of those cello voices that make you sure the woman’s entire body is capable of tremendous resonances, under the right circumstances.

    Cars honked plaintively, as though calling to their young.

    Sleep’s tantalizing glyphs, which each morning signified nothing in a different way.

    The perfect gift for the man who had everything was a quarter-ounce bottle of feminism.

    It was like the kitchen of the kind of man who was careful to wash the dinner dishes and wipe the counters before he went into the bedroom and put a bullet in his brain.

    He wished he could have paid attention to all nine innings of the Red Sox game they’d seen from Henry Rudman’s seats, could remember who had won and how, could have knowledge as clean and permanent and inconsequential as a box score.

  • I Felt As If I Was On Solid Ground

    I recently received the official word that I have been accepted to complete my PhD at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). This is the happy result of over a year of legwork that included choosing my research topic, composing my research proposal and endearing myself to the faculty by assisting with teaching.

    I completed my MBA in Sport Management and Marketing last year (also at UTS) and it wasn’t long after graduation that I realized study is a passion of mine that I wasn’t ready to let go. I reached out to a former professor, Nico, who is one of the world experts in the field I am interested in studying (sport for development) and asked if he wouldn’t mind having a drink to discuss the possibility of doing a PhD under his supervision. Fortunately, he happily agreed and we set a meeting in Manly.

    We met on a Friday afternoon just over a year ago. The sun was shining and we enjoyed a cold beer on the wharf as we discussed the future. Nico had sold me on the prospect of further study within moments, confirming that it was everything I thought it was and so much more. I would be able to study, write, pursue my own interests in terms of research, and teach!

    We parted after an hour or so and I immediately rang Claire to tell her what I’d discovered. Her advice was simple.

    “Well, obviously you’re doing it.”

    I watched storm clouds roll in over the harbour as her and I discussed what the next few years would look like. Marriage, honeymoon, kids, and now a thesis. Dr. Greg – and why not?

    I stepped onto the ferry just as the storm hit the shoreline. The rain pounded against the windows and the boat pitched more violently than is typical. It was dark and rainy and it seemed as if the entire world was moving around me but for the first time in my thirty years, I felt as if I was on solid ground.

  • Hers Was A Hopeless Surrender

    This story is part 5 of 5 of The Man From Kiama.

    There is a romance to allowing oneself to be pulled along by the perceived energies of the universe but it is akin to being enslaved by a master who is not interested in or capable of being in control. Hers was a hopeless surrender.

    The days got shorter and then longer again but little else changed. He passed the weeks with study and writing and wine but spared a moment here and there to think of her and look off in the direction she had left.

    She would ring him every so often to say hello but the tenor of her being had changed. Her tempo was no longer in step with his own. Their dance was becoming clumsy and forced.

    On a warm day in February he wandered toward the lighthouse and watched the mobs of tourists come in waves not unlike those landing on the nearby beach. He had always been happy here but Kiama felt empty without her.

    He meandered toward his apartment and past the cafe where she had worked. Past the book store where she had bought him a Joyce. Past the park where they would lie and he would struggle to get through that book for her sake alone.

    He rounded the corner to his street and noticed immediately that the hammock on his porch was swinging. The needle of his heart skipped a groove and began to play an old but familiar tune as he saw the sun reflecting off long and unmistakably auburn hair. There was a suitcase on the landing.

    He was home.

  • The Interminable Vibrations Of Hipster Capitalism

    This story is part 4 of 5 of The Man From Kiama.

    She had soured on Sydney and what she called the ‘interminable vibrations of hipster capitalism’. He was sure that he would never understand what she meant by this.

    She got a job engineering espressos for locals who frequented her cafe for little more than some company while they read the paper.

    The two of them would sit in the hammock and watch the trains chug to and fro. When she first arrived she would lay with her head on his chest but as the months passed he began to notice the surfacing of a restlessness she could not tame. She no longer gazed out at the beach – she was now looking back toward the city beyond.

    Over the course of the summer the black roots of her hair grew while the auburn ends were continually trimmed back. The colour had been entirely eliminated when she told him she was leaving.

  • They Stood And Populated A Moment

    This story is part 3 of 5 of The Man From Kiama.

    She said she would return to Kiama on the weekend but he knew it was a lie. The train accelerated away from the platform and glided over Terralong Street en route to Bombo, where they had spent the previous day walking along the seaside cliffs, and the city beyond.

    It would be two months of excuses and last minute work things before she finally made that return trip. He watched her train wind into town from the hammock on his porch and met her at the station five minutes later.

    Her hair had grown to reveal black roots that she had not bothered to recolour. Each centimetre of that black hair represented a week since he had last seen her and smelled the Chanel perfume she had been sharing exclusively with Sydneysiders in the meantime.

    The bag she brought was bigger than he was expecting. Soon they would kiss and he would effortlessly take the handle of her bag even as he wrapped his other arm around her waist and began to lead her toward the station stairs.

    For now, though, they stood and populated a moment.

  • Five Years And Two Girlfriends Ago

    This story is part 2 of 5 of The Man From Kiama.

    The next morning found them walking along the water in the general direction of the lighthouse. The beach at Bombo could be seen arcing into the haze that constituted the horizon on this rather muggy day.

    She was wearing sunglasses, which struck him as odd. Had she had these with her all night? Women are so resourceful.

    The auburn coloured hair that had looked so bright on the dance floor the night before assumed a new character of luminance under the bright sun. When she turned his way he could see that it framed a square face that had endured little stress. He envied this.

    The afternoon was meant to bring rain. They would go back to his modest apartment and sit on the hammock he had strung between two support beams on his porch five years and two girlfriends ago.

    Knowing now what he did not know then, he would make the most of this honeymoon period with her.

  • He Was Sure He Would Love Her

    This story is part 1 of 5 of The Man From Kiama.

    The train would get to Kiama at just past three in the morning. He didn’t know this girl save for the aspects of her that were immediately obvious. Her hair was auburn coloured but it was clearly not the doing of God as her eyebrows were noticeably darker.

    Circumstance had brought them together at first and then to this platform in the present. He barely liked riding the train that long with himself as company but some incredible chemical reaction brought about by a combination of white wine, cheap beer and heightened adrenaline made him sure that she actually wanted to be boarding the train.

    They sat upstairs on the side of the train that would have given them a view of the ocean had the sun still been in the sky. More than two hours to Kiama.

    He was sure he would love her by then.

  • “She would have laughed at this…”

    This is the first post in what should be a fun project: I’ll be using my Instagram feed (@tovagreg) to share microfiction inspired by the photo I’ve posted. I’m not sure what will become of this, which is part of what makes it fun. Mostly the stories will be one-offs but there is certainly the possibility for linked stories and recurring characters down the road. Follow me on Instagram and keep your eyes on ToVa to stay tuned!