2020 before Coronavirus

There are no golden years

By Thomas Feng

May 31^st, 2020

A Reset

"There are no golden years, just oceans of love, exhaustion, anxiety and imperfection."

These words by Katharine Murphy have been my mantra for 2020.

Last year was all about change. Michelle and I moved in together in a new neighbourhood; she found full-time work while I changed industries; I had surgery for the first time while Michelle messed up her knee; I lost my beloved camera; and we met each of our extended families during our overly ambitious, intense, first overseas trip together to China. It was too much of a muchness.

Recognition helped me focus the start of this year on making more time for things we want in life, to be grateful for being able to make a recovery to good health, and to be proud for being resilient and surviving a difficult year. And despite coronavirus coming into the fold, I have felt calm and relatively mellow. My adolescence and early adulthood can be described as hyperactive and involved, so forcing me to slow down, while not natural to me, has been a welcome change.

This is a look back at the memorable moments before COVID-19.

A Birthday

Michelle and I's birthdays are 10 days apart. We both turned 25 this year, an awkward scary number which exudes maturity, a tyranny of distance from our youth.

In the week leading up to Michelle's birthday, we went out karaoke-ing with Rima at the most trashy karaoke bar in Melbourne, and bid farewell to my good friend Jaynaya before she moved to Canberra by raving at Yah Yah's like we were 21 again. And for my birthday, we had drinks, dumplings and a 45 minute sweaty dance with friends until my legs were jelly.

Knowing this, we celebrated Michelle's birthday her style. I collected a boquet of native flowers from Art of Stems, to surprise her before she came home, and told her to put on our most expensive clothes. It was time for sake bar hopping. We started at HiHo, a quiet, hidden upstairs bar where you have to ring an unsigned doorbell to have someone let you in. After a fancy cocktail there, we headed to Tamura Sake Bar, a records/jazz bar on Gertrude Street where we were both overpowered by a flight of flavourful sakes. By 8:30pm, we were drunk and tired and were in bed after getting a cab home.

The perfect kind of night for Michelle and I.

A Dinner Party

It was the height of summer and Rima and I were both running fashionably late, but once we sat in Ella's European-style courtyard drinking crisp glasses of sauvignon blanc, we were in for a treat of a night. Ella prepared a colourful spiralised salad and a fragrant, tofu green curry to entertain our stomachs, while Rima brought her warmth, joy and laughter to the table.

As the sun came down and the mozzies started biting us, we huddled around in the kitchen to play "Going, Going, Gone", a monopoly-style art auction game where you pretend you're crazy-rich and can afford to purchase famous works for your art collection. The Dyson air-conditioner kept our heads cool as Ella and Rima battled for supremacy. My Old Kent Road strategy in Monopoly did not work out in this game.

A Coffee and Bike Ride

Back when I lived in South Yarra and Nathan lived in the south-east, a coffee at Bayano the Rebel was our Saturday morning ritual. We'd take out the milk crates hidden in the emergency fire-hose door, and sit outside to cool down after shooting some hoops. But now that I live up in Brunswick and Nathan out west, heading to our favourite coffee drinking cave is a challenge.

It was a dreary, drizzly Saturday morning in February. We raced through the empty city streets before cruising along the river. We glanced at my old apartment before turning off towards Bayano. Our two favourite baristas: Zac and Liam were doing their usual thing, good cafe banter with customers and serving delicious coffee. Nathan and I worked through our life conundrums over a long black and a batch brew, sinking into our natural rhythm of quiet, honest conversation.

On our ride back we took the scenic route via the Yarra Bend Park and Abbotsford Convent. The river was calm, and we were surrounded by greenery the entire way. On a winding turn, my bike's tyres took a slippery skid which caused a dramatic fal but thankfully the damage was minor, with only a few cuts and small bruises to show.

A Ceramics Class

I have always appreciated and loved having ceramic homewares. There's an earthiness and weight which other materials can't match in style and presence. Michelle booked us both in for a one-off ceramics class for my birthday, which taught us how to do slip-casting of ceramics.

Rather than the traditional ceramic wheel that we often associate with pottery, this used plaster molds and "slip" liquid clay. To create shapes, you simply pour the slip into the mold and wait five minutes as the plaster separates the liquid from the clay, leaving a solid shapes to form. This is definitely a method for people who want instant gratification.

Our teacher Lucille showed us how to marble glaze and decorate our creations, and over the space of three hours I created four mediocre tumblers and a wonky bowl, and Michelle masterfully created a marble-glazed "in-wards-collapsing" tumbler, a bowl with (cute button handles), and a drip-inked glazed plate. A few weeks later, we collected the fired ceramics from a peculiar suit-case out the front of Lucille's house to bring home.

I loved the class and would do it again. It's been a long time since I did something creative outside of writing and photography, and I really enjoyed working with my hands and tools, despite it not being a strength of mine.

Some thoughts on what's happening right now

These moments I have described above of strength and happiness are the moments I will take with me. I know my livelihood hasn't been affected but so many others have.

These crazy times have shone a light on the systemic injustice facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, the unemployed, African-Americans, people seeking asylum, people experiencing family violence, people with disability, young people, international students, migrant workers, and many other communities.