Pearls of Wisdom

I’ve been kicking around share house digs since I was 21. I was a regular lounge room floor figure at friends flats in my uni days, but my first foray into a share house of my very own was with three friends, under the roof of quite possibly the most dilapidated piece of shit in Western Sydney. The place looked like it hadn’t had a scrap of work done to it since 1889, when it was built, making it the perfect party house. We never had to worry about Jehovah’s witnesses or door-to-door sales people, either they assumed the place was abandoned or one step onto the buckled, half-rotted porch usually proved too precarious, even for the most tenacious and they would quickly retreat back down the dishevelled garden path. Eventually however, all the locks broke, the bath and my flatmates bed fell through the floor and the approaching winter made the outdoor dunny anything but appealing. The discovery of a makeshift bed up the side of the house was probably the final straw, I was the first to jump ship, off to Europe, the others were quick to follow. Years later, in a bout of nostalgia, we drove past the property, it had been torched to the ground and to our complete surprise, the only part of it left standing was that very porch.

Since then, some seven years later, the abodes which I’ve inhabited have been in remarkably better neighbourhoods and certainly more sturdier structures, we’ve not been forced to use any subterranean furniture at least. My much beloved housemate has just recently decided to return to her native Melbourne, leaving me in search of another to join our band of three. The remaining flattie and I have been conducting the mandatory viewings and interviews, alas everyone appears normal during a five minute chat, I’m sure I’ve sufficiently deceived people in the past. Experience has taught me it’s generally three months into the cohabitation that you realise the incumbent occupant is either mentally unstable, has a penchant for dancing around in your fancy knickers or as a drunk flattie once admitted to me, a lusting love and a habit to listen in on you and your partner through the paper thin walls, while helping himself, to well, himself. It can often be nothing less than awkward living in such close proximity to people we would be unlikely to keep as friends. Some of my housemates have gone on to join my wider circle of friends, while others burned into my memory, I’ve tried hard to forget. Inevitably, anyone who has done house share properly should have a book in them about their experiences, all of which should teeter on the edge of surreal.

We’ve decided on a young chap to join our fold, a fellow writer in fact, taking us to a grand total of three whittlers of words, it will be interesting to see if this potential den of creativity breeds inspiration or devastation. I am very fond of my remaining flatmate, a little older and a littler wiser, she has travelled the world as a professional, student and adventurer, at present; she slots into the latter category. Her travels and cohabitation experiences, have led her to befriend many unique individuals from the world over and it’s not uncommon for us to lose three hours waxing lyrical about life, love and whatever else piques our interest. After translating for me a poem written by a former roomie, a gorgeous motif on love and consciousness we launched into a discussion on memories and most importantly, their creation.

The persisting metaphor was a string of pearls, discussing why certain times in our lives our string is dense while others seem bare, but the essence of the debate was what merits a pearl? To what memories to we tend to allocate a pearl? I have a love of photographs, I have more pictures in frames then I have surfaces to display them, I think I like to create my memories in the same fashion, put a frame around it so to speak and let it tell its thousand words, a neat, well formed pearl. It’s a simple task for easy memories, but what about messier memories? Travel tends to make for the easier memories; I guess it the almost liquid quality of time, but what about the memories that encompass the flux of emotions? I always remember my last six months in Europe as the happiest time in my life, it’s certainly the densest section on my string, but happiness, is surely a much more elusive concept? I suspect that happiness is one of those experiences not so much lived as remembered. I doubt for those six brief months that I realised I was experiencing, breathing, literally living happiness? Having said that, I’m sure it wasn’t all smiles and teeth during that time, but these are the memories to which I’ve allocated my pearls. Perhaps I didn’t want any unhappy memories to tarnish my well formed pearl? Does this however call into question the validity of our memories? Are we the unreliable authors of our own narratives, culturing our own pearls?

I have to confess here and now, that I have been prone to minor embellishments from time to time when recounting my memories. Certainly some of my cohabitation tales have erred on the side of weird, so much that even I’ve questioned their reality as I’ve tried to leave some behind in the ether of forgotten memories. These same ones have however cultured many a giggle from fellow pub goers and backyard BBQ attendees. Popular recounts include the time I had to remove my naked, acid fuelled housemate from my bed at the height of his trip on what was only my second night in a new abode, avoiding starting at my ridiculously, well hung, frequently naked housemate as we passed each other on early morning visits too and from the communal loo, practicing calm breathing exercises while listening to a pathological liar literally conjure phantom people and events into life, trying to politely decline the culinary offerings of a generous housemate who served them in the same salad bowls he soaked his puss infected toes in and of course, trying not to giggle at the abashed young men that would leave the room of the rubenesque dominatrix upstairs. Beyond this there were also the wide variety of mental breakdowns, domestic disputes and general madness that you happen upon when you’ve lived a colourful, shared-living life. For me, yet another chapter begins this weekend and in spite of the good memories, the older I get, the less I think I can go on. Just this Thursday I had to restrain two American boys who decided to wrestle at around 2am taking out the crockery and living room furniture as they went. Never more so, than staring in the face of sleep deprivation did I wonder if I could keep doing this, but it dawned on me, that if it wasn’t for house share, what could I entertain my captive audiences with? Without these moments of pure frustration what would I look to, to bulk up my string of pearls?