Take Me Home

Trinity Coster-Dimo

The air smells of summer all year round. We are in a snow globe of pink glitter. Embedded into floors, into rings of fingertips. I feel fluorescent in the twilight, like the fireflies I’ve only ever seen in movies. Do they live here? Do they turn to stars when they—

I tap a stick against a toadstool. Gentle. Wait patiently for a tiny person to open the door. The grass grows through pebbles in the driveway. Traffic becomes less frequent; the air becomes cleaner.

A room full of cherry blossoms and unwound music boxes. Thousands of diaries, pages stained with stickers that glimmer like the dragonflies in the backyard. Their wings cast suncatcher shadows onto the moss. Come back tomorrow. The days feel so long when you are too small to fill them. A camera flashes and time is bottled. My eyes focused on bubblegum clouds on the horizon. Shattered sea glass splattered across the garden. The house yellow and blue like the shore in the background and—  

*

Time rolled past, snowballed, avalanched. I found myself standing outside the NGV, already exhausted. The train ride had taken an hour and still I managed to arrive forty-five minutes before the gallery even opened. I stood alone in the biting winter, stepping back as a seagull hurtled towards my head. It pivoted at the last second before impact, just to make me look like an idiot. Part of me wanted to sneak back to Flinders Street station before my classmates arrived. But I thought back to how excited I was to visit the NGV in my first year of school. 

Absorb the building. Let it fill you like you’re a sponge. A line of tiny feet like a parade in a space too big. Maybe I’ll get lost in the rafters. What happens if the anchor stops weighing me down? We crane our necks to see the highest paintings but this isn’t truly about the art at this tender stage. This is a break from the schoolyard tornadoes held together with scissors and glue. This is a space for our mini ecosystem to thrive, before we inevitably break down into pictures in yearbooks. Pictures in yearbooks that you look at years later and you say

‘Oh, I forgot about her.’ 

* 

I may have turned to stone, but six-year-old me would have thought that studying writing was the coolest thing in the whole world. My writing career began motivated solely through the desire to win. We used to record diary entries every Monday, and so I came into class prepared for carnage. I needed to write the most, no matter how many filler words it took. This needless race unspooled with time. Eventually, I was just left alone with my words. So, for her, I waited out the forty-five minutes until the gallery opened. I was seasick from an overconsumption of art and about to go home when I noticed it The House at Rueil (Édouard Manet, 1882). 

‘Oh wow, it’s so beautiful’, I thought to myself. I couldn’t write about it though; it’s just a house. For some reason I’ve always liked yellow and blue houses. I wondered why that is.

Oh.

Oh.

*

I grew up in a yellow and blue house. I suppose saying ‘grew up’ is a bit of a stretch, considering I moved out right before I turned ten. Anyway, I used to live in a yellow and blue house. 

Repeating words makes them lose all meaning, doesn’t it? 

The new owners repainted it. Imagine a house painted in the worst shades of pink and grey ever created. A palette so dreary that the house is envied by hospitals worldwide. If you keep imagining hard enough, you can still see the impression the garden left before they tore it out.

I think it looks terrible, which is all that really matters. Can pictures have the same meaning if the present has changed so much? One day, I will buy my house (that we never owned) and I will immortalise it in yellow and blue. 

I was, allegedly, really smart and creative in my yellow and blue house.

I know myself mainly through family stories. Out of all the things I remember from that time, I remember the spiders the most.

Reapers on the wall, big enough to swallow me whole. A bedroom filled with stuffed animals and puzzle pieces. You lose the picture on the box and are left with a handful of edge pieces like a mouthful of pills. A small piece of a bigger whole is what will stick with you. Stuffed animals and a huntsman on the ceiling like a smoke alarm. Dad come quickly, I need you to look at this spider. He says nothing nothing at all and he runs and leaves me behind. I’ve only seen him run once he disappeared into smoke and over rooftops and back to his own house. The spider grew bigger eating flies and birds and—

*

Two truths and a lie:

1. I’m still scared of spiders.

2. I’m still told by my family how creative I am.

3. I’m still creative.
   

I regret to inform you all that I’ve grown up into The Wizard of Oz. I masquerade as being interesting but secretly I just gather dust in my bedroom. Windows blacked out. What would happen if someone tore down my curtains? 

I collect hobbies and leave them in their boxes. When my aunt was sick at the beginning of this year, she gave me her yarn collection because she knew I had recently learned how to crochet. For a while, I didn’t touch it. I figured I would give it back to her if she ever wanted it. After she passed away, I put down the crochet hook, and the yarn became another ornament. The saddest Christmas tree you’ve ever seen.

When I was little, I remember painting with thick globules of tacky glitter paints, just because I liked how the colours looked laid out like a charcuterie board. It has been years since I last painted. In a fleeting attempt at self-actualisation, I went searching for painting classes. It’s too late now though. I don’t have the time. 

Well, I really do have the time, but I’m not brave enough to show up alone.

I think my friends would have liked to come with me to learn how to paint but we’re too old now. We all have more important lives to lead. 

*

Out of all the phases and hobbies and forced interests, writing was always the one thing that defined me. One of the first stories I can remember writing was inspired by Louise Cooper’s Mermaid Curse series. Inspiration is just a nice way of saying that I plagiarised it, but I loved writing that story nonetheless. I think about those books often and wonder  whether it would be weird if I tracked down a copy. 

These days writing feels like vacuuming or doing the dishes. Empty. Mindless. A mild inconvenience.

I interned recently with a program that helps kids publish their own book. I applied for the position because I would have loved that opportunity at their age. It was supposed to be a nice, full-circle moment. To make me feel like I have made some level of progress since the age of ten. I wasn’t expecting to be so amazed at their imagination; everything seemed to come naturally for them. To be honest, I started to question whether I was envious of these children. I’m not that bitter about it, I swear. I’m happy for them that they get to preserve their creativity in a time capsule.

Is it possible to balance being an adult and being an artist?

*

‘It must be great to know what you want to do. I’ve got no idea at all. I just go from one day to the next.’
—Whisper of the Heart (1995)

Whisper of the Heart is one of my favourite movies. Maybe it’s because I see myself in Shizuku. Maybe I just like the cat. Where Shizuku and I differ is that by the end of the film, she has it all figured out at the ripe old age of fourteen.  ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ plays on and off throughout the movie. There must be millions of songs in this world, right? Potentially billions. Perhaps that’s an overestimation. But regardless, out of all the songs ever created, this was the one that played at my aunt’s funeral.

I think back to how easy it was when my biggest problem was the spiders. Bad things happen but you don’t perceive the weight of them at that age. What you do notice are the tiny vignettes.  

I’m floating, dressed as a fairy at the lake by the house. The wings sprout from the fabric and droop like daffodils. I’m standing on my deck, my feet cold against the nails and I’m seeing fireworks for the first and last time. They burst like water balloons, taste like sherbet when they fall down as rain. I’m turning six and I’m underwater in the hallway. I look up and a jellyfish bobs in the draught entering through unstable windows. I sit and watch the bluebells, and how pretty and small and blue they are. Small and blue, like me.

*

I stood with The House at Rueil for a little while, before reading the text on the wall beside it. 

‘In 1882 Édouard Manet spent the summer at this house in Rueil. By then he was much affected by terminal illness, but during his stay in this Restoration-style villa he was able to sit outside under a tree and paint a number of views of the garden and the sunlit facade of the house.’

My eyes started to sting. I still don’t know why. You might say it was due to the recent death of my aunt due to a terminal illness or the fact that my dad is sick now too. Or you might say that it was the harsh lighting in the gallery. But honestly, I think it was Manet’s story. It caused me to reflect about myself and my own mental health.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Manet on the train ride home. Saddened and listless from the train’s monotony, I googled how he died.

Oh. 

Syphilis.

I found out that his final paintings were all light-hearted and tender. What resilience. Am I jealous of a man who lived over 100 years ago for painting and dying? Writing it down makes it feel ridiculous. I do think that there’s something profound about Manet’s use of art in the face of suffering. People always tell you to get a hobby as a cheaper alternative to therapy. Nobody ever tells you where you’re supposed to find the motivation to pursue a hobby. To get out of bed and create. Do we get less creative when our mental health gets worse, or does our mental health get worse when we get less creative? Do they work to erode in tandem? 

*

Life begins to feel mechanical. The train moves upon the tracks, clicking and whirring. The sky in the Melbourne CBD is always grey, without fail. 

I think about Manet. I think about a lot of things in the days I spend doing nothing. Eventually, I pick up a ball of yarn and think some more. A small piece of a bigger whole is what will stick with you. An entire gallery, and all I can seem to remember is The House at Rueil. 

Why is that?

Maybe someone’s trying to tell me something. 

University is washed from me in the sprinkling of rain. It’s dawn beneath the tree and the knots in my shoulders unfurl against the wood. Does everyone feel this way, I ask aloud. In the corner of my eye I see a tiny person nod. My fingers itch for my phone but I won’t scratch it. I’ll let time slow. Yarn over, yarn under. The tide crashes in and recedes. I wonder if the sky will be grey today too. I’ll come back again tomorrow and we’ll look for shapes in the clouds.

Trinity Coster-Dimo is an aspiring Melbourne based writer studying for a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing) at RMIT University. Her writing typically consists of fiction and poetry, with a focus on exploring identity. She enjoys film and literature, works created by women in particular. She is currently interning at 100 Story Building.