A New Coat of Paint

Rotting, cracking and letting it go.

Dear reader,

Letting go is not my strong suit. I find peace in building my world carefully, with discernment, and letting it grow from there. I like being on time, planning ahead, and the sound of a teacup clinking into place in a saucer. I love The Crown, and being in bed by 9:30PM. Everything feels right when these things happen.

I don’t like last minute changes, or sharing a room, or dilly dallying before a business transaction, or having to wait for someone after an agreed time. I’ve come to live with it, and get really good at living with it - but unless said urgencies are for a creative project that I know will come to fruition, the dislike for them stays.

So we have a fundamental problem: life is full of dastardly, last minute changes. Usually, my practice of self defence in these situations is to clam up, go into my shell, and stick my head out just to bite people.

But you can’t do that when the dog falls sick, your best friend stops calling, a desperate job candidate is a no-show at the interview, and the painters decide that today is the best day to come give your house a makeover - 4 months after you booked them.

Thankfully, I have a mum who’s always been excited when change beckons - and she’s adept at turning even the most hopeless situation into something sparkly.

For three days we huddled (3 women and a dog) in a bed wherever there weren’t fumes. We shifted all of our belongings to the balcony - taking meetings in pyjamas, sifting through the 5 years’ worth of stuff we collected, seeing what was useful and what was clutter. Personally, I’d like to get rid of everything we don’t use at least once a month - but that’s my bachelorette lifestyle speaking.

And so begrudgingly we kept a bunch of things. We held onto trinkets from Amsterdam, New York, and Brisbane - we stuffed the Christmas tree into a box and placed each bauble into a cardboard box. We found a bunch of stuff too: cracks that were dangerously close to breaking my bedroom in half, boxes upon boxes of broken Christmas lights, and even a set of 25 name placeholders.

Would you look at the size of this thing?

My world was breaking apart anyway - this was just another wrench in the works. But three days and a lot of work in, some familiar spaces re-emerged. The piano sat, relaxed in its proper corner. The bar found a new home, with considerably more light. And the house looks bright again. There is no life defying crack on the wall and I’m fairly certain I can go about my business as usual.

But some things will not go back to the way it was. My sister and I curated a complete wall with our art, which has now returned to plain old white. Some pictures at my desk are thrown away. Half written letters and drafts of sketches are in the bottom of some recycling bin somewhere.

Now, we can begin again.

Love ( lots of it),

Kaav

P.S.: To those of you who sent me all your music last week, thank you so much. I cannot put into words how much they helped.