when I am not in my journal ranting on my mundane everyday, I find solace in writing my everyday into creative non-fiction. I am no Ann Patchett or Natalia Ginzburg by any means but to create is my function in life. So, welcome to Coastal Objects, my little writing corner on Substack. For my eyes and maybe your eyes only.
CW: discussions of body image and mentions of sex and alcohol.
My birthday cover (Though I was not born 1949. Sorry for any misleading information.)
The New Yorker May 21st, 1949. Cover by Garrett Price
#1: To change
Every year on my birthday, I look for changes in myself. Most times I was disappointed I had not been rid of my fat and acne—everything teen girls despised to have on them. We as girls carry bags and luggage of insecurities even when in the lost end of a train, find its way home. I see these in letters and photographs, and of course, my teenage diaries, which I never completed because I did not believe I had fulfilled the teenage prophecy.
That prophecy of having sex, drinking, and overall faux fun was integrated into all media and shows, and even the girls around me. It’s basic to say that the media is a bad influence, and in truth, teen girls aren’t nearly as inspired by the media as they are by the people around them. We look to cool girls and sisters who partake in the pilgrimage to adulthood as opposed to the men who we groan over. It isn’t jealousy, but rather wanting that sisterhood.
Saturday night, I was out with my friends celebrating my birthday at a rum bar, then partaking in an embarrassing attempt to publicly drink and not look aged. Around that time, I witnessed what I could assume to be two sixteen-year-old girls in a failed attempt to buy alcohol. We laughed it off, as many would, at them and at the idea that it had been four years since we had done that ourselves. They had lash extensions in an endeavour to falsify an adult aura, covering their perfect baby skin, with maybe concealer for the government-mandated teen acne. I was never like them at sixteen; I had chosen a private life of drawing under my covers, writing stories, and staying in my room most weekends. I was programmed to follow rules and break them only in uncool ways, for instance, when I got in trouble for wearing below-ankle socks.
There was something funny about them and me, one twenty-year-old witnessing my fourteen-year-old self’s muses, standing outside the train station at different points in our lives. It was slightly cold, but I held warmth from my hard solo and previous cocktail. I had wished to be them in a way, not for the alcohol or the lashes, but for the confidence and the effort to do something beyond their rooms. I, now twenty years old, still partake in mental rituals my younger self participated in. I grew up with a stomach and a disinterest in physical education. I was larger than my friends, but not enough to escape the ‘you’re not fat’ rhetoric. So, every birthday, I’d look into the mirror and try to witness that overnight change.
Script from Sixteen Candles (1984)
I would imagine my legs and stomach as huge pimples, seeping and ready to deflate. Of course, this was impossible, and at worst, I would indulge myself if I had lost weight by a certain time. I was so desperate to witness a change in myself, hoping to see it create a domino effect of successes. I trained myself as a dog, allowing myself to feel my real age if I had succeeded in acting mature and in control. I could lie, saying I am so much happier in myself, but truthfully, I have more acknowledged that I do need change, just not in the ways I have done in my past nineteen years.
Every time my intentions are pure—seeking a physical change—I am truly seeking to see an adult appear in front of me. A woman with a fully developed frontal lobe, a purpose, and a chance at a real career. Reaching that two-zero at 12.00am, unofficially as my real time is debated, my gentle existence now makes sense to me. I mourn how I wasted my teen-hood reaching for goals of the unattainable, though I do not regret my strive to understand myself at such a confusing time.
On May 20th, at 11:50 p.m., ten minutes before my birthday, I wrote, ‘I am still in adolescence, and I must learn that it doesn't end until I wish. I can still grow up.’ There was a change from then on. I worry about most birthdays; I have never truly had one I felt alive in. There’s a curse specifically around even-numbered birthdays—a forecast I dread. This year, what the bureau predicted to be rain and cloudiness became a day of sun in fall’s coldest month. At twenty, I mourned my lost teen years. I had gone to parties and gotten drunk; I had been in a relationship, but still, I tilted my head to still examine my face.
In my bathroom mirror, the bulb’s yellow light hits my skin; it isn’t the most flattering, but I see past it.
For once, I see a girl who looks like a woman.
#2: Of my dad
For this birthday, my dad handed me his old film camera. At first a part of me was a bit sad, handling something that wasn’t really mine. It is quite entitled of me, yes, at my grown age. Though, in my media law class, my tutor brought up a point I think about quite often, ‘If you take a photo, regardless if you take it on your camera or your friend's phone, it is your photo. You own it.’ It was a lesson in legality and copyright, yet allowed me to articulate how meaningful of a gift it was.
Unlike digital cameras, your memory card is that one roll of film. It is yours physically to hold.
My dad’s camera was said to travel across Europe, it was his eyes and the world, his canvas. Though I had discussed my previous interests in film photography, my dad had passed me this treasure. It carries an old camera smell that reminds me of him.
We have never been the most talkative duo, we like to sit in silence with content. We are a slight mirror image, headphones on with our ipads watching pride and prejudice at different times. When I'm in the kitchen, I catch him watching the BBC version at the dining table turned workplace and always pause him to ask: ‘How’s mister Colin?’
Some mornings, he brings me a chocolate croissant from a local bakery. It’s his love language I believe. When he handed me the camera, he came into my room a lot of the day to see if I needed assistance. He would gently hold it and show me what each and every function meant.
Aperture, if you’d like a blurred background.
Shutter, for shutter speed and taking very still photos
Programmed, letting the camera do the work for you.
I tend to choose the latter as my camera literacy is still in development. I put my first roll of 35mm film in. Ilford 400 black and white that dad has picked up for me. I watched a few tutorials before doing so, then testing it on a candle. I told him next morning, seeing him pleased and laughing at my beginnings made me so very happy.
In Sydney’s temperamental weather, I have not used it since June. The unbearable, mainly annoying, cold and its physicality in the clouds that dome the skyline have left me unable to feel inspired. I have reached a peak in my creative block, no matter how much I start the Artist’s Way or do my morning pages. I guess that’s what has me so in awe about dad, his ability to just photograph, just because he can.
He will take photos of mum and I at the dinner table, even if I have my food piked on my fork, mouth opened and ready to devour. Our dog obviously has the most in the portfolio, our resident diva has been trained to pose. Though, dad’s photography of the world itself is what has me in awe.
He has an ability to capture moments as a physical memory. Skateboarders mid air, flowers mid bloom and the corporate workers during their personal siesta. To me, he sees even the smallest characters exist and interact within our societal ecosystem, it isn’t about capturing the moment but a moment.
There is Porta400 in the fridge, labelled and ready to be used. In my desk, three more Ilford 400 Black and White rolls and a Kodak Gold 400 reside next to my highlighters and ink. For me to load film, it is a gentle process, my nuisance to the subject still lingers and I shake often worrying of a small defeat. Now loaded, successfully, If I let go of pre-existing artistic expectations, I could maybe be like dad, capturing the world as I see it.
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