An Imperfect Epicurean

As I'm writing this post, japester is practising his violin playing in the front room - and in fact it was his suggestion that I write about music tonight. A musical muse is a useful thing, especially when one is dead tired and stuck for ideas after a long drive on very little sleep.

So, what words do I have to write about music? As it happens, quite a few.

I was about five years old when I first picked up a violin, with intent to learn how to play it. It was not very long afterward that I gave it up as a bad job and instead picked up a cello which, for some reason, seemed to suit me better. Years of cello lessons ensued with a variety of teachers, but it became quite apparent that I lacked the temperament and dedication to be a concert musician (and in any case, I doubt that had ever been my parents' intention in having me learn an instrument) and in the middle of high school, I packed it in.

In the year or two following I had unsuccessful flirtations with both flute and piano which, in addition to being productive of unpleasant noises and a great deal of frustration, seemed to demonstrate that if I wanted to be at all musical, I should stick with strings - of the bowed or plucked variety that is, not the ones hammered with keys in the guts of a piano. Duly chastened - or enlightened, if you want a more positive spin - I returned to my cello-playing and kept it up through my end-of-school exams.

It wasn't until a couple of years later that I once again picked up my cello, this time to play with a medieval-style music group who really wanted a bass instrument to join them. Obviously the cello isn't a medieval instrument, but amateurs work with what they have - and I did get a couple of useful tips from my last cello teacher (who was by then teaching my older brother classical guitar) on how to make a modern cello better emulate the softer, less robust sound of a baroque cello, which is just a little bit closer to the sound of even older instruments like the bass viol, which actually fit the period of most of the music we played.

After another, more lengthy hiatus and a move interstate (about as far as I could go and still be in the same country) I once again took up the cello in the cause of reviving live dance music as part of the culture of our local medieval recreation group - a cause in which I was supported and encouraged by japester, who at that time was also once again picking up his childhood instrument - the violin - with intent to play.

Whether I should call it a departure from my true path or a musical evolution is open to debate but this time, having observed previously that most of the arrangements in circulation either lacked a bass line or had one that was quite dull relative to the other parts, I also taught myself to play the recorder. Like many others, up until my first encounter with medieval music, my only experience with the recorder was that it was that horrible squeaky plastic thing I was made to play in primary school. But I had by now learned that a wooden recorder can be a truly beautiful instrument, in the hands of a competent player - so I set out to become one.

Small problem with this plan, however - I was very, very bad at reading treble clef notation. Bass clef, no problem; but I just didn't know where any of these notes were on a recorder, much less how to quickly match notation with fingering whilst sight-reading. The solution at which I arrived owed much to the fact that I already knew many of the more popular dance tunes by ear, so I could pick them out on the recorder whilst following the music; eventually, I worked out which notes went with what fingering and could now learn new music. For the most part, though, once we'd assembled our core group of musicians, I was still the only bass-instrument player, so when there were bass lines, they fell to me. But that was okay, as long as it meant we were actually playing music at medieval events, rather than just listening to it coming from discreetly-placed and artfully concealed speakers.

So where has all this musical dabbling left me today?

Well, the music group we worked hard to establish is still going strong without us, which makes me happy because that had always been our intention. For me, though, moving back across the country has seen yet another lengthy hiatus in music playing, punctuated by rare and short-lived bursts of enthusiasm. For the most part, my cello, recorders and guitars all lie neglected and unplayed.

However, japester's recently renewed enthusiasm and commitment to playing violin, coupled with the fact that I hear him improving all the time, has made me think that maybe, just maybe I can overcome my present musical lethargy and become, if not anything like a great musician, at least a competent hack who can bust out a tune or three at short notice.

Yes indeed, a musical muse is a fine thing to have...

For some time now, my motto has been, "Everything homemade is healthy."

Obviously this doesn't mean that the food I make isn't often loaded with butter, cream, bacon, cheese or duck fat (or sometimes all of the above). What it does mean is that I generally know everything that's going into my food and usually where it's all come from too. I try to maximise the number of ingredients I buy fresh and minimally-tampered-with from markets and to minimise supermarket spending, especially on heavily processed items. I also try to buy organic where possible, especially animal products.

I'm not perfect in adhering to this regime, of course - I am not above chowing down on things like instant noodles (though in this, I am in the company of no less a culinary luminary than Heston Blumenthal), packet soups or frozen pizzas (though in the latter case, I tend to add my own ingredients to the toppings). I do tend to avoid eating from fast-food chain stores, however - mostly because, with very few exceptions, their food leaves me feeling bloated, disgusting and ethically compromised.

The main reasons I claim homemade food is always healthy, though, are mental and philosophical. There is deep emotional satisfaction in creating delicious dishes for myself and others; especially at this time in my life, I need all the positive feelings I can get. It is also very good for me to know that I am actively living my own philosophical beliefs about food. It's been said by many that food is about more than just bodily sustenance but even in these days of preachy TV chefs and growing awareness of the importance of fresh produce, there still seem to be alarming numbers of people who really don't engage with their food as anything more than fuel. Not everyone can love cooking, of course - an afternoon spent pushing meat through a crank-handled mincer, roasting and sieving tomatoes, finely chopping a heap of veg and turning the whole lot into a slow-cooked bolognese sauce probably isn't most other people's ideal Saturday.

I really do think, though, that one's approach to food can reflect a lot about one's approach to life in general. I am an Epicurean - both in its modern sense of being a lover of food and flavour; and in its original philosophical sense of believing that a life of pleasant tranquility is ethically ideal and worth pursuing. Again, I am far from perfect in my efforts to put this into practice; but on those occasions where I settle in to inhabit the kitchen and turn my beautiful fresh and organic ingredients into a delicious meal to share, when I balance the effort of preparation and cooking against the deeply pleasurable reward of eating, then I know I am living up to my beliefs.

It's been many years now since I first started to really care about food; though it must be said, the early signs that I would ever do so were less than promising.

During my childhood, I would only ever order one of two things whenever we ate out - lasagne or, if the restaurant didn't have that on their menu, fish and chips. I didn't have what could be called an adventurous palate. Nor did I feel any great interest or demonstrate any particular talent in school cooking classes. I was quite content to stick to a fairly narrow and "safe" range of dishes and my response to new and unfamiliar foods was generally one of avoidance.

My culinary ineptitude continued through my teens but then in my early twenties, a few things happened to shift my attention towards food and cooking. For one thing, I moved out of catered accommodation, so I had to start learning to find my way competently around a kitchen, work out how to make things taste good and realise that rather than throwing every spice in my pantry into a dish, a more balanced, less enthusiastic approach to seasoning generally yielded better results. This was the second half of the 90s, about the time that cooking shows really came into their own - so it wasn't long before Jamie and Nigella found their way into my video collection (to be joined, down the years, by the Two Fat Ladies, Hugh, the Hairy Bikers and more). And the pivotal experience was being taken out to a couple of gourmet restaurants and finding out just how good food could be - it was then I discovered that in fact, I really love eating.

And that's the key thing - I enjoy cooking primarily because I seriously enjoy the results. I cook the kinds of things that I like eating, and it just so happens, fortunately, that other people like them too. There is something deeply satisfying about seeing other people enjoy food that I've cooked.

Happily, with the growing interest in food and cooking came an increased willingness to experiment with flavours and try things, even things I thought I didn't like, just in case I've been missing something amazing. As a child, I never liked avocado. Later, through the means of guacamole, I realised that actually it's really nice to eat. Other things I have more recently added to the list of foods that I like and will readily use include anchovies, olives and even mushrooms (though I still don't think I could face a barbecued fieldy). I have even consumed a freeze-dried cricket, just to see what it was like; if you're wondering, they taste quite unlike any animal protein I'm familiar with - I can't disagree with one food writer's observation that they have a flavour much like that of dust.

Now I'm taking what feels like the next logical step in my foodie progression - growing food. I dare say my gardening experiments will be the subject of many a post in the weeks, months and hopefully years ahead!

Today, apparently, I am a creature of the early morning. I've actually been awake for a couple of hours now, though most of that time was spent attempting to fall asleep again - clearly without success. So I thought I might as well take advantage of time I hadn't planned on using otherwise. Who knows? I may even manage two posts today.

There is something curiously appealing about waking up early on the weekend; but it's a feat I've seldom accomplished. Whilst I still had my office job, I tried very hard to morph into a morning person, but what normally happened was that I'd drag myself out of bed on the cold and dark weekday mornings, shower, dress, wolf down a caffeinated beverage and stumble out the door, usually picking up breakfast on the way because I didn't have time to make anything at home; then come the weekend, I'd crash out and be lucky if I surfaced before midday.

Of course, now that I don't have to be up early, I'm finding that it's much easier to get out of bed in the mornings. At the moment I don't know exactly what I'll be doing on any given day, and waking up early maximises the number of hours I have to explore possibilities. It used to be the case, particularly during my uni days, that my most productive time was at night and into the wee hours - most of my essays were churned out in caffeine-fuelled all-nighters. These days, the culture of the workaday world has infected me sufficiently that I feel more inclined to do things during the day - and especially if I get off to an early start.

So I'm finding, as I sit here on the couch with a small grey cat alternately demanding attention and exploring the collection of my stuff on the floor next to me, that although I do know broadly what I'll be doing today - driving to Bathurst, shopping, cooking dinner - the day still seems alive with possibility.

And I haven't even had my first coffee yet...

Well, (almost) no sooner than I'd made it back from Perth, I've set off again, this time driving north to spend time with my parents in Bathurst, with a stop over in Canberra either side (not really on the way as such, but only about an hour out of it, and another opportunity to catch up with old friends). I've remarked in the past that my car contains my life in street directories - in descending order of thickness, Melbourne, Canberra and Ballarat. I don't need a street directory for Bathurst - it's my home town and I know where everything is there.

So why, after extolling the pleasures of being home, am I leaving so soon after getting back? Well, part of the reason is that I'd been planning to do this trip for a little while, and it was delayed by the Perth trip. Another thing is that I think it will be kind of nice to rock up on my parents' doorstep on Father's Day, so that also helped dictate the timing. And to be honest, I think it's fair to say that home has become kind of a nebulous concept for me. No matter where I go, I'm leaving people behind somewhere.

I also have to admit that I have come to really enjoy taking road trips. It makes sense, of course - they were a big part of my childhood and I always really looked forward to our annual drive from Bathurst to Brisbane to visit my aunt and grandmother. The drive was always part of the holiday, and it still is for me. I love climbing into the car, turning my music up and hitting the road. It's in my blood, I guess.

The black dog followed me home when we were both just puppies.

In those days, of course, all it could really do was exaggerate my self-centred childhood fears and I didn't know what it was so I couldn't shoo it away. Eventually it grew bored with pestering and getting no acknowledgement, so it settled down to wait for the more fertile pastures of an adolescent mind.

Then, still a gangly youngster yet to grow into its long legs and giant paws, the black dog came bounding up, barking, tongue lolling, desperate to play and to be one of the pack, bowling me over with its enthusiasm. Imagine its disappointment when it found I couldn't get up. Deeply offended, it curled itself in a dark corner of my mind and let the demons come. This time they were darker and had claws. They told me I was worthless, that I couldn't love or be loved, that everything I thought I had been was nothing but a thin facade and I was just one slip away from sinking into violence and madness and despair.

And then the black dog whined. I stood up and said, "Enough." I prised the demon claws from my thoughts and began the arduous crawl back to reality. On the way I looked over my shoulder and said, "I see you, pooch." He thumped his tail once, and faded away.

But he never wanders far from the den. I've seen him many times, patrolling the borderlands, keeping watch for the demons. Every once in a while, the black dog barks and I know they're coming - the fear and the despair, the Catholic guilt that comes roaring up with its malevolent laugh - "Muahahaha! You don't care. You know you don't care because you're not suffering enough! Are you suffering now? Well, how about now? Are you?!"

But then I look around and see the black dog guarding my back. I meet the demons face to face with a resounding, "Fuck you!" and after putting up an ever more feeble fight, they scurry away, back to the darkness, as the black dog howls a victory. When my way is clear once more, I pat his now greying head and he sinks into the shadows, until I need him again.

Over the last several years, I have increasingly come to appreciate the value of plain speaking, in all areas of human interaction.

I think there are a number of reasons for this. One has certainly been my growing impatience with the kind of obscurantist religious language with which I grew up and the recognition that once you strip away the fancy phrasing from an article of faith, there's not much actual content left. A bit later, having dipped my toes into the hallowed waters of academia, it occurred to me that maybe the postmodernists are wrong and there actually aren't any ideas that are so complex and convoluted that they require expression in kind. There is good academic writing and very, very bad academic writing - the latter generally leaves the hapless student far more confused than she was before doing the reading. Again, once you've hacked and slashed your way through all the superfluous verbiage, postmodern theory seems remarkably content-free.

And it's not just the intellectual life that benefits from a spot of linguistic spring-cleaning. Being able to speak openly and plainly when sharing your feelings and opinions with others is a truly wonderful thing, and there are times when the sheer elegance of simple, straightforward language produces a deep emotional satisfaction.

However, these are pleasures I have only recently begun to appreciate to their full extent. For it must be said - plainly - that recognising the importance of clear, direct communication and actually being good at it myself are unfortunately not the same.

Why should this be so? Why has it been so hard, for most of my life, to own my opinions and feelings and to speak my mind openly in simple, uncompromising English words?

Again, I can think of a number of reasons. I spent a great deal of my childhood and adolescence believing that it was actually morally wrong to hold certain ideas and opinions, that feeling the 'wrong' way about something was sinful and made me a bad person. Speaking out about such feelings would, it seemed to me, somehow cement them in a way that merely having them on the inside did not. Not to mention the fact that speaking your mind could get you in trouble or draw unwanted attention - and that didn't seem worth it if my opinions weren't right anyway. It took a complete mental meltdown into clinical depression in my late teens before I could bring myself to simply state my feelings bluntly, and then it was an act of sheer desperation.

A bit later on, I fell in with what I now recognise to have been a toxic circle of acquaintance. One of the things that was poisoned during this period of my life was my approach to interpersonal communication - especially when it came to interacting with potential (and actual) lovers. The thing was, if you really liked someone, it was never a good idea to admit it. To do so would be perceived as a weakness or a flaw, especially if the said someone did not reciprocate your feelings. Every admission had to be heavily qualified, just in case.

On the intellectual front, the somewhat tortured prose I tended to produce when writing essays was generally rewarded with distinctions or better - perhaps because of the insidious influence of postmodernism in the humanities. Spinning out sentence after jargon-laden sentence was a great way to disguise the fact that I didn't often know very well what I was talking about - and the positive reinforcement I received from my professors only encouraged more of the same.

Then, somewhere along the line, things changed for me.

I'm not sure when or precisely how it happened, but I couldn't help but notice that failing to speak my mind and express myself clearly and simply was like living in a cage - and having noticed it, I had to do something about it. Why not let people know what I think and feel? Isn't that how you take the measure of a person?

Maybe I just grew the confidence to realise that I could afford to lose friends; to think that, actually, it's better to know that people like you for who you really are, not for the facade you project; that it's better to say nothing than to drivel on aimlessly if you actually have nothing to say; and that it's better to take a chance and tell someone that you find them irresistible, than to stay silent and miss out on what might be the best thing to ever happen to you.

It hasn't been as easy to make the change as it's been to write the words to describe it. But I know that what I write now is authentic, that this is my real voice. I'm not faking it anymore.

And I will never go back.

It feels kind of cliched to observe that life is as simple or as complicated as you make it. While some might disagree, I still think this is true, give or take the odd occasion when circumstances just seem to land on you.

I suppose it's easy for me, right now, to say that my life is remarkably simple, being that I've recently walked away from my job and am pretty much just existing from one day to the next without any really fixed plans. But not everyone is in a position to do this, of course! And it would be fair to say that if I am to pursue the course I intend and still make a living, hopefully with multiple income streams, the simplicity probably isn't going to last.

So much for work. Relationships seem to be the other major area in which people are very good at complicating their lives and I don't think I'm exceptional in this regard. Again, if I pursue the course I intend here, the simplicity of monogamy will be left further and further behind as I explore the greener and many-other-coloured pastures of polyamory.

So it could be said that I'm complicating my life, just a bit. My father has remarked in the past that I seem to be quite good at doing this, but quite frankly, anything is complicated when compared to my childhood. And there it is - it's all relative. When I was working in an office job, the progress of my life was simplicity itself: get up, go to work, work, come home, eat, sleep, rinse, repeat. Every so often something else might happen, but the pattern was ploddingly repetitive.

The problem with this kind of simplicity is that, well, it's boring. It almost becomes necessary to create complications in order to relieve the monotony. In the end, I think that's why I walked away.

I wonder if that's at least partly why so many married people cheat on their spouses.

What I've discovered is that there are ways and means of complicating one's life in a simple and straightforward manner. One can hold back for fear of getting into too many things - something I've spent most of my life doing, to my great detriment - or just throw caution to the wind and leap into life headfirst, tackling the obstacles as and when they arise. The latter, I think, is actually simpler in the long run.

The trouble is that the first course of action, such as it is, doesn't result in a simple and stress-free life. If you don't engage with life, then anything that just lands on you (despite your best efforts at avoidance) is all the more difficult to deal with. Enter complications, and with them, all too often, a world of hurt.

Of course the latter offers far more opportunities for pain and failure right up front, but these are usually also opportunities for growth and success - especially if you face up to them openly and honestly. It's the difference between the complications you create for yourself and the ones that happen just because you were trying to run away from them.

And the best thing about my simply complicated life? It's not boring anymore.

Sometimes it seems as if life just happens to me, and I'm just going along for the ride. That's kind of how I'm feeling right now - I'm not acting entirely on my own impetus, but on the prompting of circumstance.

This isn't a bad thing, however. For just over a week now, my life has been relatively unplanned, what with having divested myself of an office job for which I have to show up every weekday, and maintaining a fairly broad set of intentions - adamantly not anything I would dignify with the name of 'plans' - that I can undertake as and when the mood takes me. As of today, and probably for the next couple of weeks, I am more or less completely unplanned, to the point where I actually don't know, from day to day, where I'll be spending the night. This is actually a new experience for me.

What it has done is highlighted a couple of ways in which I am extremely lucky. On the one hand, I have the means, at present, to have this experience in a way that is not difficult or stressful in a financial sense; on the other hand, I have excellent friends who are willing to be flexible and provide me with company and somewhere to sleep at relatively short notice. These are both reasons for gratitude.

I don't know how the next two weeks will go, but I am interested to find out.

The other day I had what felt like a bit of an epiphany.

I've been thinking a lot lately about gender identity and what it means to need to express yourself in certain ways. In that context, I stumbled across a website dealing with androgyny, and found it quite intriguing. In my experience, androgyny has always been primarily a personal style, an external, perhaps even superficial expression of taste - albeit one I have always fancied; it had not occurred to me that it might also be a gender identity, one that encompasses aspects of both masculinity and femininity but has no particular affinity for either.

Well, I thought, perhaps that's me.

There is some evidence in support of this hypothesis - to wit: I have for some time now been dressing in what I can best describe as "pretty men's clothing", because it suits my body and my demeanour, and I feel comfortable that way. As a child, whenever I made up games with my brother or friends, my characters tended to be either male or 'tomboy' girls. I've always felt drawn to ambiguous-looking people, whether physically male or female; my own self-image doesn't seem to me to be particularly gendered, despite knowing that I am biologically female; indeed, there have been times when I've downright resented having girl bits (though what girl getting her first period doesn't, really?) and being admonished to behave in a 'ladylike' manner. Those who have encountered me only in online fora have tended to assume that I am male by virtue of my writing style. This doesn't bother me in the slightest. The first time I cross-dressed for a medieval event (one of the few places a woman can do this effectively, I might add), a friend remarked, "Wow, Sarah - you carry that off so well!" Even when I don a long, flowing gown to go to a feast, it still kind of feels like I'm dressing up as a woman.

So much for that. At this point I inevitably began the self-questioning that for me goes along with any such feeling of sudden enthusiasm - am I just trying to slot myself in to a pre-existing mould? Am I making a big deal out of something that isn't really that significant? I certainly don't want to be that person who's like, "Hey, so many of my friends are genderqueer - gosh darn it, I need to have a thing too!"

So that's kind of where I'm at right now. I'm still intrigued at the idea, still attracted to androgyny as a personal style, but I don't really want to leap in and claim it as an identity just for the sake of having one, of belonging to the growing numbers of people who are realising they don't fit neatly into the gender binary. I don't think I do, really - but why go to the trouble of putting a label on it and then conforming to the label? Isn't that just the same shit in a different bucket?

Part of it is that I don't really understand it when people talk about "feeling like" a woman, or like a man for that matter - but that may well be simply because I've never had to make the comparison - I certainly have no feelings akin to the sense of having the "wrong" body, as reported by some transgender folks. I've had no real issues accepting the fact of my body, even though it's treated me to my fair share of awkwardness and embarrassment - whose body hasn't done that? But do I "feel like" an androgyne? I honestly don't know.

Another, and perhaps more socially important aspect of my reluctance to define myself as a particular gender identity - no matter how attractive it might be - is the fact that I have, in general, never found that my biological sex has been any hindrance to my self-expression. Yes, there are some respects in which I openly reject femininity, but no-one seems to find that particularly troublesome. My experience would undoubtedly have been different had I not been born into a post-second-wave-feminism society, but as it is, if I want to walk down the street in a top hat and tails, or if I reject the nurturing role of mother and homemaker, no-one except religious fundamentalists and right-wing conservatives (often largely indistinguishable demographics) are really going to have a problem with my choices. It comes down to the fact that I have been luckier than a lot of people who, because of social constraints and deeply ingrained assumptions about gender roles, have to fight to achieve a level of self-expression that truly conveys who they feel themselves to be.

And that is why I feel like a pretender.