Been thinking about the scenes that…
…make up our lives, some more memorable than others. Most mundane, maybe tear-stained, stuffed with love, serendipity, joy.
When there’s no topic (or person) I wanna set alight with words, I love describing my life’s scenes with an almost savant-like scrutiny.
My 16-year-old flirts with the first bars of Human Nature on new keys and catapults me back to my teens too. Complex hip hop rhymes thrill from my firstborn, the DNA strong!
I meet a student from Mongolia who sells me her red tux blazer. ‘I got too fat for it,’ she smiles and pockets my $50 bill.
Sipping a ‘sacred’ latte with my mentor, her words feel like a classy collision of logic and divinity.
Shameless clickbait about a comedy icon pal I adore, prompts me to call her.
I drop five bucks on an ice block, a shard of lime shocks me, mid-suck. Organic to its core. Clearly.
I’m buoyed by Helen Garner winning the UK’s top nonfiction prize for How to End a Story, her 800-page diary collection.
She warned loved ones if they were in it but, “…other people I didn’t consult…I thought they had it coming.” LOVE. Details like, “…careful about wiping his lips while eating.” pepper the entries. I find such minutiae endlessly fascinating. Maybe because our idiosyncrasies, when wrenched into print, make us less opaque?
Or more human. And that’s enough – just like the most mundane scenes from your life – when you are present for them.
© Phyllis Foundis 2025