Author: Phyllis Foundis

Everyone I’ve ever met, worked with

…loved, kissed and even given birth to often feels like a character I would relish throwing onto a page, in a play, on a screen.

In fact, I’ve probably studied you, listened to the way you speak, the stories you tell and maybe even the way you smile … only to drop you in a plot that might just reflect life’s mechanics back to me, to us.  

And when I’m not daydreaming about holding my beloveds forever in a sentence? I salivate over strangers…

This week my highlight reel is brought to you by the low hanging vegetables also known as phone zombies.  

In a luxe department store on Mother’s Day, I spy a father and his little girl. She sits in her pram big blue eyes alert to a world she’s just getting to know. Meanwhile, daddy scrolls, bopping his head occasionally to the non-descript store soundtrack.

Outside a crowded café, a young couple walks by, pushing a pram. They’re dressed to within an inch of their credit cards in designer garb, carrying large designer bags. Suddenly their toddler screams; she’s dropped her dummy – popularly referred to as a smartphone.

The mother springs into action, scoops up the tech and begins to, what can only be described as, cradle the device as if it were a mewling newborn, while her actual baby looks on confused.

I can judge. Admire. Learn and be inspired by the people I watch everyday.

It’s character building. Literally.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Frittering away time gets a bad rap.

Even the word frittering gives just the right amount of ‘reductive’ when used to describe blowing off those precious hours, minutes, tick, Tok, tick.

It’s a flimsy-looking phrase too. Toothless, without much substance. And I know I’m going to come off all ‘back in my day’ now, but maybe this f-word refers to the fools who eyeball tech until their retinas run dry, blindly tossing away time on gaming and its sleazy cousin, digital slop. Day in. Day out.

I’m unapologetically critical here, ‘cause ya know what?

There’s wasting time and then there’s artful squandering. Slothful reflection. Languid stretches of lazy stuffed with introspection and meaning, maybe.

I refer of course to the immortal, soulful gentleman who made wasting time famous; that patron saint of idling, Mr Otis Redding who turned sitting on the dock into a meditation – catching mornin’ rays until the evenin’ came, watching ships roll in and then out again; a static adventure underscored by longing, perhaps?

Sometimes I wonder what the hell we’re all pushing and striving for.

Have you ever thought that life’s real juice might just be found in the longing – and not the doing? Could active stillness be a powerful, deceptively quiet f***
you to grand goals and the unrelenting 21^st century pressure to be productive?

Look at that. I’ve just spent some time on a quiet and cold Saturday night in Sydney, writing a couple hundred words on doing nothing.

What a waste. Or not.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Let your mind wander. 

It’s good for you. Good for others. 

It can be liberating. Aimless. And all manner of WTF. And yet, every last jellied-ounce of firing neuron is necessary.

Sure. Zipping off to a random thought may not be on par with boarding a plane and travelling to exotic climes stuffed with sun and sweet strangers but…

…morning rush hour and as I hurry I hear a rhythmic tap-tap behind me. I turn to see a man in a suit. He charges past, his polished lace-ups the source of the tap-tap. As he walks away, I wonder what business he has wearing soft shoe shuffle footwear. And then I imagine him breaking into a spontaneous two-step for loose change and lazy applause.

…the homeless woman squats demurely surrounded by bags, mostly plastic except for one from a high-end store – in pristine condition. My musings fire up. Did someone treat her to a designer scarf in lieu of a sandwich?

…the tram’s packed with the usual tech addicts. One lady with a long face catches my eye, her expression downtrodden. What’s up, ma’am? She looks like a smile hasn’t warmed her cheeks since 1987.

When it’s my stop, I collect my thoughts and as if on auto pilot, I hand her the unseasonal frangipani I carry, “Have a lovely day,” I say. And you’ve never seen such delight on a human so early on a stupidly run-of-the-mill morning commute.

“Thank you!” she replies and her face springs to life.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

…maybe you’ve felt a few drops.

Ten years ago this week, the planet lost a gigantic talent. Whether you loved him or not, Prince revolutionised an industry persistently drunk on homogeny.   

Over the years I’ve stared slack-jawed at his mastery of on-stage flirtation, urgent guitar licks and intimate banter with adoring crowds creaming for more. Unguarded in a sound check, somewhere in Japan, a sprawling, empty stadium at his feet, Prince teases those ivories into a time-stopping rendition of Gershwin’s, Summertime – casually snapping gum like a sexy, cocky Mozart with messy hair.   

In the days after he died, I fell down a purple rabbit hole of countless videos, articles and genre-defying albums. It wasn’t long before I time-travelled to… me as a teen up late watching Under the Cherry Moon, fantasising that Prince would deflower me in a candle-lit cave not Kristin Scott Thomas. Fast forward to early 2016 and I’m leaping three feet into the air, tickets to his final Sydney concert, Piano and a Microphone mine, all mine!  

He died so young. So brilliant. So what? Why do we grieve for famous strangers?

When my beautiful father passed away in 2011, the grief was acute and it continues, unabated 14 years on. Shedding oceans of tears for Dad, is acceptable.

But sobbing for an elusive superstar?

Maybe when our beloveds die we mourn the parts of us that could only breathe when they did. And then we realise anew that the ‘…electric word, life’ never means forever. Ever.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

You may call it Fall…

…while I’ve always known it as Autumn. Either way, Sydney is in the throes of a rather superb time of it. The season, that is.

Toes are still getting about town in sandals, all footloose and fancy free. Warm breezes ruffle the frangipani trees, surprising them out of their pre-Winter wind-down; maybe they’re thrilled – or miffed, “I gotta keep blooming?”

It actually feels like Autumn has fallen out of its routine. 

And this may be a stretch but… I think there’s a link between the splintering of an expected weather pattern and those Groundhog Days you and I can get caught up in. You know when days just seem to blend into one? You’re standing still. You’ve hit a lull. It’s a snooze-fest. There’s a reason why lullabies are hummed to babes at bedtime. 

So, how can you wake up your days and rouse the passion projects stuck in a coma while you chase your tail paying bills, catching trains, meeting deadlines? I’m bored. And no, buying yet another jet black, sequin-strewn mini dress ain’t it because sometimes in ridiculously rare circumstances, shiny garb will not diffuse the doldrums. 

Ugh. That hurt to admit.

The only way to rip open a routine is to move. Make the scary call. Take the leap of faith. Do anything. Something. Disrupt stuff. It’s the only way to beat the humdrum.

And those sparkly minis? 

They’re built to shine up a storm when you shake yo’ ass in ’em.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

I just did the Good Greek Girl thing…

…and went to an evening church service for Orthodox Good Friday. 

And a thought occurs to me now… 

Can I spend the next 224 odd words ruminating on what exactly makes one Good? Or even, dare I say, Greek? It’s an interesting couple of questions. And frankly, I don’t have answers that will satisfy the ‘good’ or the ‘Greek’ among us. 

So, I’m going to do what all cross-bearing Christians do – confess. 

On a magnificent, unseasonably warm Autumnal day in Sydney this week, I was at the beach, basking in the delicious sunlight, feasting on an equally mouthwatering bacon and egg burger – with relish. 

Now, if you are an observant Greek Orthodox type, you’re probably shocked by my sacrilegious choice of morning fare. Chomping down on animal products during Holy Week?! Not good. 

In fact, I should’ve been eating like a strict vegan for the past 40 days. 

I love the Divine, but I don’t believe that dreaming up a dozen ways with tofu and eschewing cheese for Lent is the pathway to spiritual bliss. 

So tonight, I enjoyed my beautiful, Byzantine religion with all its rituals, pomp and ceremony. Mingling with hundreds in a packed church, I whispered ancient Hellenic prayers, millennia in the making. Touched the gleaming, gilt-edged icons of Mary and St Peter. Breathed in, incense. And kissed Christ’s flower-strewn tomb in emotional gratitude for… everything. 

I felt good. I felt Greek. And I felt God, too. 

Happy Easter. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

I don’t have eyes on your face now.

You could be freakishly gorgeous with superb facial symmetry and enough collagen in them thar cheeks to make injectables look like a joke.

But maybe with a bigger bank balance, ego or both, there are bits of your visage you’d wanna tweak and tuck? 

When I was in my teens being called beautiful wowed me. It was a big word and a big deal.

Attractive never impressed. Cute was for babies or pups. But, beautiful? 

The stuff of shock n’ awe. Yeah, youth wasted on the young.

My late father is one of the few people to ever call me beautiful. I’m not fishing for anything here. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I get it.

But I am bemused by the delusional, I mean optimistic, among us, who insist that scalpels and needles can cheat the years. 

This week, out of a sheer car-crash kinda fascination, I watched a detailed ‘before and after’ plastic surgery video shared by a cashed-up 50-something from NYC. Gone were the jowls, sags and bags of middle-age. She was now photo-ready! 

I can tell you, after walking a couple red carpets, those drum-tight eyes and chins ain’t a pretty sight up close. Anti-aged smiles are a horror movie, kids. 

Resistance is futile.

Our bone structure changes as we age. The eye sockets, jawbone, cheeks, nose and forehead of your 20s don’t do time travel well.

Yesteryear you is, history. Any way you cut it. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Writers are hard-wired…

…to cannibalise their lives, throw friends and family under buses all for the sake of a sparkling piece of prose.

The grand dame of personal essays, Joan Didion, once said, 

“Writers are always selling somebody out.” 

I confess that occasionally (every day) I look at my life as a ridiculously compelling series of stories and characters I must immortalise in a book, film (soon). Not because I think my laundry is dirtier than yours, but maybe it’s better out than in? 

That sharper than sharp writer, Nora Ephron (also known as the scribe who immortalised orgasms served up in a New York deli – thanks to Sally and a bemused Harry) was raised to believe that everything is copy. Eventually, she realised this meant, control; slip on a banana peel and folks will laugh at you. But write about slipping on that peel and it’s your laugh. Now you’re the hero of the pratfall, not the victim. 

Before I started today’s Phylosophy, a fashion crisis hit me outta nowhere. I changed three times before I deemed myself ‘ready to write’. 

Sequinned track pants? Too shiny. White linen? Are you nuts? A star-patterned black jumper? Too broody. A slightly moth-eaten, long cashmere cardigan in dirty vanilla over a one-shouldered black onesie. Perfect. 

Not me a distracted, procrastinating, attire-obsessed writer with one eye on scroll-holing and the other on snacks. 

So, sure. One of these days, I may sell you out. I just gotta get my outfit right, first. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Glamour razzles and dazzles.

Turns heads. Fuels red carpets. Inspires love and envy. This week the HQ of glam blazed through a billion media outlets. 

The 98th Oscars conjured up the usual shiny suspects in all their bejewelled finery. But is it all benign – I mean, really? Well. The clue is in the conjuring.

Ever since I read Maggie Hamilton’s deceptively sweet book, Inside the Secret World of Fairies, my view of ‘glamour’ has had a makeover because its etymology is a little sinister.

Originally from the Scottish word for grammar, glamour’s sole purpose was to beguile ‘the victim’ into seeing something other than the reality.

Hm. Victims, fans, red carpet reporters. You say tomato, I say Tom Ford.

Walter Scott summed it up in his charming medieval verse, The Lay of the Last Minstrel circa 1805:

“It had much of glamour might;
Could make a ladye seem a knight;
The cobwebs on a dungeon wall
Seem tapestry in lordly hall;
And youth seem age, and age seem youth:
All was delusion, nought was truth.”

But. For one brief, genuinely shining moment, the Oscars honoured Jessie Buckley when she won Best Actress for her role in Hamnet.

She took to the stage, a slender row of diamonds at her neck, Chanel around her shoulders – accoutrements that paled in comparison when she dedicated her new little gold friend to “…the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.”

And as mamas the world over will gladly tell you, there’s no glamour in that.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Wanna buck social norms?

Adopt a radical, new lifestyle? Travel to lands of untold cerebral beauty?

Do you want to be a maverick, a renegade? 

Read a book.

It’s one of the most counter-culture things you can do now. And I don’t mean scrolling through digitised bestsellers or slapping on headphones so authors can read to you instead.

Can we please fall back in love with turning actual pages? New (or worn) inky scents that escape from well-thumbed pages? As nose-pleasing as a lover’s skin.

Last year I read 24 novels. I don’t share this to chest beat or lord it over those of you who haven’t read a book since 2005.

Reading is my revolutionary act – especially when I do it in public.

I’m that person on your commute who makes a big show of pulling a fat book outta her bag – even when I don’t have a seat, even when I need to elbow someone to make this happen. And then I’ll turn the pages with a flamboyant rustle so hopefully even the tram driver can hear me starting a new chapter.

But alas. I’m very aware my one-woman crusade is futile, since I’ll never be louder than the chick conducting a desperately urgent, deafening Teams meeting on her phone opposite me.

We’re living in crazy times, friends.

In the 1960s, being a free-loving, weed-sucking, flower-strewn, dreadlocked hippie meant you defined the counterculture.

But in 2026, you’re sticking it to the bots when you have a library card.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026