#01 Who taught the wildflowers how to bloom in the cracks?
Talofa Lava friends, family and people of the internet. Tommy here, with my first newsletter. I’ve started this as a way to gain more ownership of my storytelling and as an outlet to extend some thoughts that feel like they need a cup of koko and a biscuit to get through instead of scrolling past rapidly on your Instagram algorithm. If you’re here it’s because you want to be or you’re curious, I love that.
Fa’afetai Tele Lava - Thankyou and Welcome to my fale.
I’ve been living out of the “city” now since the beginning of the year. Bouncing between my childhood home in Macquarie, Canberra and my sexy man's house in Guildford, Sydney.
For 4 years I had been saying I would leave Sydney city and move to the Central Coast or Samoa or New York City or South Auckland or Parramatta or Blacktown or Perth. At the beginning of this year in an act of desperation and a need to be closer to my family, I moved back home to my childhood room in Canberra at me mums. I realised for some time I was hamster wheeling through life, dancing between melancholy and misery for 4 whole ass years. In these 4 years I continued to climb the ladder of a career in the arts, ticking off the things 10 year old Thomas would never even believe. Like being a crying gay in a train in a Guy Sebastion music video. Ticking and Clicking my way through and sucking whoever's toes I could to get the next job. I once let a Broadway director suck my toes for an hour whilst staring up at the 15 assorted porcelain dolls hanging off his poster bed. Staring back at me I could sense they’d witnessed many a twink having the marrow sucked out of their toes in the hope of becoming broadways next BIG TOENAIL. I didn’t become a Broadway star but he did have some black and brown dollies. Representation matters.
Me, Sitting on a dark train crying gay tears, because my makeup is smudging? Not sure will ask Guy. We did win an Aria though.
Anyway, back to Sydney. I’m waiting for the T2 Lepington line from Guildford into the city to meet an old friend for an $8 coffee, a group of arab and islander school boys help a mother of 3 get her pram on the train before one of them returns to the conversation of who has the hottest girl cousin. “Cuz! have some respect! There’s full kids on here and shit” says one of the other island boys glancing around. Gentleman of da area. Once we hit Ashfield the demographics change, an artist-looking type gets on, Gorman pants, an A-symmetrical haircut, obscenely large two litre Frank Green water bottle. Frank Green artist sits infront of me. I try to sit and be present on train rides and not hunch over my phone ever since I read an article about 'Mindy', a human model created by a group of researchers from Med Alert Help and the New York-Presbyterian Orch Spine Hospital. Mindy is a model of what we will definitely look like in the year 3000 because of phone use. It freaked me out because I’ve always thought I had an already overly craned neck and that there is some inside joke about my craned neck that everyone knows but me. I once had a therapy session where I spoke about my craned neck for an hour and what my craned neck represents in 3 key areas of my life, the session started and ended in tears and my therapist assuring me my neck wasn’t any more craned than the average millennial. I look out the window and daydream, gazing into backyards we ride past, someone’s Yiayia glance’s up as she hangs out a giant tub of crisp, religiously white sheets. I think she smiles at me for a millisecond as we whizz past, proud of the sheets. Laundry day.
Mindy from the year 3000. But also everyone on the train.
Mindy is so relatable to me. Balding, clenched empty grip on things outside of Mindy’s reach, brow furrowed at existence itself and a second eyelid from staring at the fucked up world through a screen. I don’t want to relate to Mindy any longer.
In the reflection I can see Frank Green’s laptop as they plow through an endless list of flagged emails. Their 2023 green acrylic nails aggressively tap at the keyboard.
Tick-Click-Tick-Click-Tick-Click-Tick-Click-Tick.
They start every email with “I hope this email finds you super well” stopping briefly to skull at least 500mls from the FG water tank. I consider asking them “but are you well babe?”
Earlier this year, back at my childhood block my inner child races up the driveway and screams at the front door “Can Thomas come play?!” I say yes. We walk to my local IGA to buy a bag of black and gold musk sticks. I glance down at the footpath to see ‘Angus and Tom waz ‘ere 07’ I remember going back a second time to recarve our names in the fresh concrete. Concreters always come back the day after to smooth over any penis’ and profanities that have been carved overnight. They never come back a third time so if you persist your name will be memorialised 4eva. Names carved in the walk of fame “Don’t you forget we waz ere” I think to myself. I pass the suburb sign for the neighbouring suburb of ‘COOK’, a small part of the second O has been painted over and now it reads ‘COCK’. This is a long standing tradition and ever since I can remember someone has always made sure to maintain this sign to read COCK. Persistance can start small. Decolonising tings. I keep walking, through the underpass where I learnt how to ride a bike and where I came off in a tumble and grazed my knees. I remember having a deliciously large scab and persisting until it reached maturity at it’s largest and crunchiest point before carefully peeling it off and eating it. Scabs are more socially acceptable to eat than boogers, something about eating a battle wound that is bad ass in my opinion.
I stop at a favourite park and watch some children play, tears fill my eyes and I want to scream “My inner child used to play here”. I’m remembering the child I slowly stopped coming home to visit and the fun we had together. I’m learning that the little shit usually knows me much better than I know myself. He’s reminding me of persistence. Of just doing the thing because I enjoy doing the thing. Of finding the gorgeous in any moment.
“Doors closing please stand clear” bip-bip-bip-bip-bip. Back on the Leppington line I glance at the reflection and Frank Green has finished all the emails, now scrolling Instagram checking the tags on a friends post, zooming in on each persons face, zooms out, zooms in a third time on the most attractive of the group, zooms out, scrolls down, looks out the window, scrolls back up and comments “Glowing darlings”. We’re riding between redfern and central. One of my favourite parts of the T2 line. Bursts of yellow, soft purple and 2023 green wildflowers and weeds creep through the cracks in the steel returning to the sun after ducking every 4 minutes for a passing train. Persisting.
I have been saying I would start a newsletter, make a website, write a book, share my work again, make more, be more, ho more, ho less, make something out of my grief. I’m so over sitting on the sidelines.
Who taught the wildflowers how to bloom in the cracks?
Thankyou! Here’s a few things I’ve quite liked lately.
Choose one of 5 - A Commencement Address Edith Sampson gave at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois in 1965. It hits, still, today!
Tones and I’s new song Dance with me. - I love catchy pop song.
Joshua Serafin - New movement artist obsession. I’ve been loving arty things that feel birthed from the state of the world.
If you like this offering of mine, you can share it. Not sure how yet, still figuring out how to use Squarespace but maybe screen grab and a link or something to your Instagram?
Alofa Atu
Tommy
