Author: Phyllis Foundis

Grief slapped me awake last night.

My phone rang just after 3am from No Caller ID. A male voice. Garbled accent. Sorry, wrong number, he said.

I hung up thinking, who’s making calls at this hour? And then I looked at my texts.

It took a foggy second or two to make sense of what I was seeing – a sepia-tinted image of my beloved friend, Ray alongside the words,

‘…another good human gone. Way too soon.’

What?! No. It’s a prank. We just messaged over a week ago. A few keystrokes later and I’m on a tribute page dedicated to his memory. But I still fell for futility and sent Ray a text.

Raymou?!

Straw clutching of the highest order because fading hope f**ks with you.  

Raymond Christodoulou and I met in a London ad agency 20+ years ago. He was a brilliant senior copywriter, intuitive, cool and witty beyond measure.

It was love at first write.

We also bonded over our Greekness and when we started writing a screenplay together, planning our limo ride to the movie premiere was just as important as plotting our flick’s twists and turns. Ever the Hellenic dreamers.

Ray loved these Phylosophies and hardly a week went by when he didn’t send me an email bursting with ’embarrassing’ serves of praise and cheerleading,

“Just don’t stop Philosophysing.”

Grief sucks. And when I’m plunged into this murky place, I search for signs, clues, anything that will help me divine sense out of the incomprehensible.

How can my funny, generous, wise and profound, life-loving Ancient Greek be gone?

The sun was starting to rise on my first day without Ray. I looked at my phone again. No Caller ID had rung me at 3:33am. Grief pushed me to look up the meaning of these digits.  

Angel Number 333 tells you that the Ascended Masters are near you.

Ha. Figures.

While my friend didn’t part seas or turn water into wine (though that would’ve probably been his favourite Messianic trick), Ray absolutely mastered the gentle art of being a magnificent human.

Our world isn’t a darker place now that he’s gone. It’s brighter because Ray lived in it.

Raymou, I will love you and miss you more than all my Phylosophies will ever say.

Always.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

I’m sitting on my bed as the minutes…

…veer too close to midnight, insisting I write to you.

Here’s a fantastically imperfect account of my Friday for your delectation.

Began the day ‘downward dogging’ with my youngest boy. We’re on day 11 of a 30 Yoga Movement Challenge where the twists, turns and bends bring the structure but ten tiny minutes doing something I love, with a human I adore, brings the joy.

Some easy hours at work followed. Lunch was a home-made tuna rice salad, bathed in olive oil and dotted with apple slices; because quirk is a must-have ingredient in a menopausal woman’s diet. Browsed a second-hand clothes app; do I need another sparkly top resembling a disco glitter ball? You bet your sweet sequins.

High-tailed it home in the afternoon to throw another metaphorical ball in the air – it’s my second gig juggle. Then I dressed for the evening’s frivolities – opening night of Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Enroute to this orgasm for the intellectual elite, I popped into a vintage boutique and bought an oversized red heart pendant. Then it was Festival time and Tim Minchin’s almost orchestral presentation, Coward.

Dude was on brand – raucous, wry, painfully clever, riff-happy. His audience adored and guffawed all at once. Fascism-trashing, f and c-words filled the air. Love, spirit and art, played their parts too and then he said,

“Storytelling is empathy manifest.”

And the giant red heart pendant in my bag throbbed.

That’s it. That was my day.  

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Less than one hour after this picture...

…was taken, I danced with strangers like they were long-lost cousins, all of us besotted with our (re)discovered connection.

Much has been mythologised about ‘aligning with your tribe’, but I never thought I’d feel this unfold, in one of Sydney’s oldest dive bars…  

It was during Love Soul’s evening of fat funk and creamy soul, when Kool & The Gang’s, Fresh, suddenly soaked the speakers. And I found myself near four folks of similar vintage to yours truly, singing at the top of their lungs –

“Conversation is going round, people talkin’ ‘bout the girl who’s come to town.”  

We started yelling the lyrics like sugar-happy toddlers but the best was yet to thrum…  

Within seconds, we were yapping about the clubs we haunted in our 20s – Juliana’s, Riva, Rogues. Then they requested, Midas Touch by Midnight Star and when the track played a few songs later, I watched from across the room as they unapologetically lost their minds.

The groove soon carried me into their tight-knit circle, and they welcomed me in with an almost predestined familiarity. It was the best kind of weird. And we immediately began yell-singing,

“I’ve got the Midas Touch, everything I touch turns to gold…”

I get how breathless this may all sound. And maybe you had to be there.

But the love I felt in that moment was palpable and proves that connecting with likeminded folks on a dancefloor, in the groove, will never lose its shine.  

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

A question as ancient as time.  

But also, a pointless interrogation in my humble view.

Who are you?

The smiling one with the light in your eyes? Daughter. Son. Forgotten friend? Wife. Husband. Mother. Father. The confused one. Ambitious. Torn. Divorced. In love. Alone?

Life has many habits; it’s designed to surprise, delight, alarm and cheat on you. A myriad. Still. The question begs – on hands and knees it seems.

Who are you? Does the answer catch in your throat?

Maybe it’s more comforting to believe something else entirely… Life may not want you to

know. Ever. Because the answer’s a changing, shifting thing.

You.

Always evolving, morphing from one phase to the next. In silence. Uninterrupted by

introspection. Undisturbed by the external?

Your brain is electrified with change, daily. Cells in your body die and reimagine themselves back into being.

Who are you?

Relax. Ignore society’s urges to ‘find yourself’. To settle on your favourite dessert. Test your sexuality. Decide what you enjoy listening to, watching, reading. To quickly land on the definitives and be that, just that, love that for always.

Pause. The. Pressure. Please?

Maybe only some things should be discovered and kept in metaphorical amber forever.

But you, my friend, are not. Far from a fossil (!). Can’t be sealed with a kiss. For all time.

Maybe you’re like mercury. Amorphous. Dangerous to the touch if you try and force you into shape. Or reach a once-and-for-all understanding of who you are.

Then again, maybe not.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Have you read George Orwell’s…

…quiet horror, 1984? I’ve been putting it off. But this week after being gently shamed by my eldest over a pulp romantasy I’d just started, I decided to bite the proverbial.

And then as if on cue, the universe seemed to reflect what unfolded in the first pages of this iconic work of fiction.

About to cross the road and I pass a student walking my way; earphones in, eyes down, glued to his phone. And before I even have time to eye-roll, the message on his graphic t-shirt sneers… “I’m not interested in your opinion.”

Take a seat on the tram next to a woman trying to crochet a tender little plait out of orange mohair. A thick yellow and blue wool turtleneck hugs her chin. She’s an unmistakable melange of hippy-boho-arty-earth-mama. It’s like I can smell the vegan on her breath when we strike up an impromptu chat about life, motherhood, and the copy of 1984 in my lap. “I’ve read that. I know all the quotes and we’re living it now!”

She describes the movie that was based on it and when I wonder when it was made, she pulls out her phone and in seconds her AI pal is doing her bidding. The irony.

A few hours later I spot an old guy standing on a city corner holding a placard that reads, Break the spell. Free your mind. A cult rules the world. Violence. Corruption. Distraction. Destruction.

Life, art, imitating.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Come walk with me. Look over my… 

…shoulder. Sit inside my thoughts. Notice the fodder that fuels an imagination.

I stepped out of my overheated office one lunchtime this week. A bottle of perfume on my mind. I’m doing the quick city-worker-walk, dodging the motley crew of gawping tourists and brazen pigeons.

As I arrive at Chemist Warehouse a tense scene is unfolding inside. A security guard is in mid hands-free frisk of two teen boys, around 16. I push past, undeterred by the drama – I’ve got olfactories to sate.

Within seconds, the sideshow escalates when the taller teen pushes the security dude almost off his feet. The guard doesn’t flinch. And the teen screams,

“He was making fun of my haircut!”

What’s more shocking? The aggressive shove of an adult man or the dummy spit? Did the guard really mock his coiff?

The teens were soon kicked out and I bought my perfume – after deciding against asking the guard if he really teased the teen’s 80s-style ‘do.

Meanwhile, my ‘scrollstopper’ on an idle FB Marketplace browse was a vintage, rust n’ all egg-beater – yours for $5. The description reads: It was my nan ’s – with a free typo thrown into the batter. And my heart gave a little yelp.

Baked on memories going for a song. Surely the loneliest bargain in town.

Notice everything, friends. You’ll be richer for it. But be warned; you might be moved just a tiny, tiny bit by the sheer, heartrending minutiae of it all.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

‘I hear you’ve had some visa issues.’

These were the first words Sam Neill said to me when we arrived on the set of Dr Zhivago in Prague, circa 2002.

I was going to interview him about ‘an impediment’ we shared – the stutter. And his story would feature in a documentary my partner and I were producing called, Famous Lost Words. 

After months in pre-production, we’d fallen at the last hurdle, literally pre-flight, because of a pesky visa issue and were denied entry into the Czech Republic. So, we flew to Munich instead, praying for divine intervention – or showbiz magic. The latter came to our rescue, in the form of Sam’s unflappable assistant, Maddo.

When I sat down with Sam and the cameras rolled, his candour conquered my jitters (kinda). He spoke openly about the underground of actors who stutter but don’t ‘come out’ to casting agents for fear of losing roles. And he was also philosophical about our bumpy speech.

“It’s just how you are in the world.”    

At the end of our interview, Sam gave me a little bottle of lavender oil from his Two Paddocks farm in New Zealand before we took a walk along the river and snapped photos in front of graffitied walls.

Famous Lost Words has never aired. But maybe one day it will. And when it does, you’ll see the Sam Neill charm in action as he delivers the last word on a ‘condition’ that never hindered his success,

“I love stutterers.” He smiled. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

I’m writing this Phylosophy late…

…on a Friday night after an exhausting week.

My eyelids are heavy. Tonight’s dreams are loading. I can hear my youngest boy blowing his nose for the tenth time – a nightly stall tactic, for my night owl. And after weeks of preferring a sleep-in to 15 paltry, powerful minutes on the yoga mat, my lower back and I are barely on speaking terms. But we’ll kiss and make up over a downward dog in the morning.

I spent the afternoon with my 96-year-old mother. Memories stuttered, felt fluent, then splintered again. She was a child bride. Barely 16. Her first groom, 32. It wasn’t love. I’ve heard this story so many times but today, the age difference disgusted me.

I helped Mum put on a new pair of sandals. Black, soft leather with gold buckles. Hush Puppies. She smiled, delighted, before padding around her tiny living room, a little unsteady on her feet, like a toddler.

I turned the plastic pages of a small photo album she keeps close, my mother’s youthful beauty in an ancient city beamed at us in black and white. On another page is a scrap of cardboard where Mum’s written a poem in black ink for my late father, I search for you everywhere…

 We closed the album.

“Life’s a labyrinth,” she said, her words heavy with a mystery I pretended to understand.

“Yes, it is,” I agreed and mum’s eyes filled.

We hugged. I wanted to hold on forever.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Let’s talk about, outburst.

It’s the act of bursting out of… what?

Social mores? Expectations? Comfort? Solitude? Quiet?

It could also be that quirky little – or large – indefinable, out, where you and I let something we’ve been feeling, free.

Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this. Play along, please.

So. We have public displays of affection where the loved-up insist on performing saliva swaps at bus stops, park benches and more, oh sigh!

But what about just public displays of passion not predicated on bodily fluids or lingering limerence?

People love passionate people – without having to know them; all they need is the knowledge that another human feels enough courage or temerity in their heart to just let rip once-in-a-while. I think this is why shock jocks and mouthy social media types draw so many of us in – we’re seeking ‘the loud’ because tiptoeing on eggshells? Tiring.

Yes. Discernment is key. Not all impassioned folks are worth adoring. And no.

I’m not about to launch onto a soapbox and lash you about the face with my political rhetoric.

Far from it.

By the time you read this I will be sequinned up and down for a superbly unfettered display of passion in an inner-city Sydney pub. The soundtrack thick with funk. The potential for love, large. This will be my first foray into building an outlet for people who love that sweet soul music – the kind that’s crafted to excite, thrill and unite.

It’s time to burst a move, people.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

I’ve just finished a book called…

…Arborescence written by Rhett Davis; an unassuming Australian author who looks like he could be your mild-mannered accountant.

Or the guy who teaches a community college course on whale migration patterns. Basically, unremarkable. But in my opinion, this dude’s a superhero of wild, remarkable, fanciful storytelling.

Rhett’s novel is a compelling, gentle horror about society as we know it breaking down when billions choose to uproot their lives and ‘dig in’ to the earth, so that they may morph slowly, painfully and finally peacefully into… trees. It takes going green to a whole new level.

AI is also a side character in the book, a foil for all the arboreal mayhem. But it’s less ‘artificial intelligence’ and more alternative intelligence where the semi-sentient bots are disembodied bosses who hire and fire at will, using ‘beautiful actors’ as stand-ins for company meetings or new employee interviews.

I also interpreted Arborescence as an extreme antidote to ‘the busy contagion’ that continues to spread in our world; who are you if you’re not moving, doing, achieving, busying your body and mind relentlessly?!

Well. I gotta confess.

As I write this on my bed, sleep taunts me. It’s been a hectic week. Every second drenched with something to do. So.

While I won’t be digging my pinkies into any dirt any time soon, I kinda get the craving to stand still. Just make like a tree and not leave.

Normal, more alert, transmission will resume next week, friends.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026