Day 107

Easter Sunday used to be the day on which I put everything to one side and spent the day painting and listening to classical music. I haven’t done that for some years, because we’ve been in transition for at least the last 3 years. We put the house in Stradbroke on the market in 2019, so I never really felt settled enough to try to make visual art from then. And we still have upheaval right now because the house/garden is a construction site. And the study has become a temporary storage site for most of the stuff that was in the garage, which is roofless at the moment. I have, however, kept all the off-cuts of paper from gluing the blog into my journal so that I can turn them into semi-A4 works of art when I get round to it.

On my daily walk yesterday, I thought about sex, work, and depression. It makes a change from thinking about death. The thoughts about sex may have had something to do with a small discussion I had with M, F, and J on Friday when we were talking about the book about the emotional impact of parenting I started writing years ago and never finished, the ultimate aim of which is actually to put people off having children. M, F, and J said it would never work because people would just carry on having children. Because they like sex so much? I said. They all shook their heads. So there we have it. There’s something other than the love of sex that makes people have children. Personally, I hate the expression “biological imperative,” and am glad it was not verbalised on Friday, because I think it’s a misogynistic phrase. To finish this paragraph on an up, M did remind me that I am still the most broody man on the planet, especially when I see a baby. He turns the proof on himself.

I am writing these paras between uploading the Radio Stradbroke podcasts I am so behind with, as well as listening to Kimmy broadcast live. And who said men can’t multi-task?

My dreams last night centred around me being convinced that I had mis-plotted Aggie somewhere. I kept drifting in and out of this, one minute believing it to be true (and being part of the story, which I most certainly am not) and realising it wasn’t true and that, in any case, it’s a first draft, and that the completed thing might actually never see the light of day. The thing I worry about most is that it’s occupying my mind more than The Mortality Code which is not a good development. So I have resolved that I am going to have to finish that particular novel by the end of June. I’d better get writing.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 64