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I’m currently devouring…

The Land and Its People by David Sedaris. He also happens to come from Greek stock – which deepens my adoration.

Sedaris brings a whole heart and surgical approach to his observations on life and its people. The detail, delicious.

Reading his words is like listening to a gorgeous song that hits the write notes and chimes with my scribe-y soul so I wanna hum it everywhere. My melody sounds like…

A 20-something student walks onto my path. He’s dressed in head-to-toe designer gear in poo brown, knee-high socks, with a haircut fashioned after a salad bowl. I speed up so I can walk ahead. Not in the mood for quirky aesthetics.

Town Hall is already abuzz with homeless services – a blend of heartbreak and hope. The chirpy signs are up – Breakfast, Bible, Chat! I spot a slight man in a knit mini dress shuffling towards the makeshift food set up. He doesn’t have the hips for that frock.  

I catch a video glimpse of myself giving a friend three quick kisses on the cheek and I look so serious – like I’ve poured my entire heart, valves n’ all into those pecks; making love a solemn business. Why?

And as I write at my dining room table, I overhear a gardener confess to his co-worker in the greenhouse near my balcony,

“You’re my favourite one to work with. I trust your word more… you know?”

Who wouldn’t want to look at life through a heart-shaped lens? Not me. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Wonder and the WTFs are waiting…

…for you around every corner.

I’m greeted by a neighbour’s children in the lift, ready for a pre-school walk with their spindly greyhound. He’s circling their legs, excited. They say his name. Wha-? What did you call him? Séance. Séance? Yeah. Who named him that? Dad. Do you know what it means? Um, no? I get out on Ground before I need to explain the spooky moniker.

The guy next to me on the tram chews gum so loud, like he’s breaking some kind of clown barrier. Outside Woolworths at Town Hall the morning freak show assembles; there’s a muscly dude, face full of tattoos, urgently scribbling in his journal. A few metres away a homeless man is talking to a well-dressed woman who seems to have stopped for a chat?

No. As I walk past, I hear him describing the chips he wants from the store like he’s ordering filet mignon. She nods and dashes off.

A happy little plea from my local grocer lands in my inbox inviting me to drop by and see his topless pineapples. The alliteration sublime.

Who knew this juicy summer snack could be so seductive?

I dance with Gen Z club-goers who revere old school soul vibes like 50-something connoisseurs; yell-singing the lyrics, in love with the vintage, they snap photos on a real camera.

Confucius said, “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

And I want to add, everything has meaning, but not everyone feels it. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Sometimes I think…

…that unless you’ve got wildly thrilling tales to share about your life like…

…that time you skydived out of an ancient plane held together by masking tape… pinned a live bug shaped like a brooch to your t-shirt in a Mexican market… pissed off an Amish man who thought you were stopping his black car for directions, not a selfie… gave a fake orgasm for your first TED talk… stole one of the prop crucifixes from the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer…

Unless your life bursts with enough quirk and success to warrant your own bio pic starring a Hollywood hot shot seeking an Oscar nod – what’s the point?!

Who am I kidding. I don’t think this at all. Even though I have genuinely hurtled to earth with a stranger strapped to my back. Wore bug jewellery. Annoyed a cult member. Reached a staged climax. Committed a little larceny.

Life ain’t a highlight reel.

I celebrated my birthday this week on a day stuffed with blue sky and a priceless blend of ‘ordinary’ like…

Eating deep dish pancakes with my sons in a diner. Going on an Op Shop spree for more Levi’s than is practical. Walked by the heritage-listed building I was born in. Served up fresh smoked salmon for my 96-year-old mother (but only after I removed the dark bits from the fish because she’ll only eat the pink parts). Read birthday cards that made me cry.

Looks dull. Feels shiny.

No A-Lister necessary. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Barbra Streisand sings an iconic…

…timeless lyric that’s always held me spellbound – and in awe. 

“People who need people, are the luckiest people in the world.”

Why are they lucky? Because they understand the value of needing that warm, supernatural stuff found in connection, belonging and … love.

Now. Let’s fold this needy concept into the AI age.

Yeah, this is another bot rant. So, look away now if you’ve swallowed the tech rhetoric hook, line and… blinkered.

This week I’ve done existential battle with bots again. It’s so tedious particularly when I’m surrounded by folks who have surrendered to the dark (f)art.

The mania that seems to have gripped most AI users as far as I can see is akin to the juvenile catchcry, look Ma, no hands! The subtext being, I can do this all by myself. And I don’t need you!

Cue maniacal laughter.

It’s quietly demoralising too, if I let the tech get to me. So that’s when – as a self-dubbed ‘organic scribe’ – I lean on my brain’s might.

“…like melted icicles in my mouth…” This is how I describe the cold tap water swishing around my molars after I brush ‘em first thing.

No. I’m not out to make Pulitzer proud, but that’s hardly the point.

I just love the making. The friction of wrestling with a sentence. Conjuring up quirk. I want my thoughts to morph into words that mock homogeny. I need to feel it. All.

And I guess that makes me lucky.  

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Light and shade. One can’t exist…

…without the other we’re told. We believe it. But detest it too.

Last week I shared the loss of my friend, Ray. And you sent your love in calls, texts, hugs and emails. Thank you.

One note came from a great lady I met a couple years ago at a silent meditation retreat.

“Glitter only works because there are shadows.” She wrote.

Wow. Sweet and bitter all at once. But Liz is right.

And I think of the sequinned garb in my wardrobe shooting sparks of light across the ceiling when the sun strikes it. But, at night, the tiny discs are dark.  

As much as I love a showy sequin, the appeal is in its ephemeral nature. Would we love the sparkle as much if it never dulled? We’d need to look away sometimes.

I’m reading a beautiful book right now called, Sandwich by Catherine Newman. It’s essentially about loss – of youth, parents, rearing our young children.

One stunning sentence lights up a page,

“I’d even pick the way that pain has burnished me to brightness.” Newman writes.

And it felt like she’d reached into grief’s sludge and wrestled this gem to the surface.

Does pain polish us, not punish? The friction a blessing of sorts?

Kinda like a pearl exists because of a pissed off oyster.  

Maybe, like the sequin, our power lies in the ability to catch light and go on shining in spite of the dark or… because of it.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

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