Drifting Notes

Lyss
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Short, voice-driven travel stories, made for anyone curious about the quieter corners of the world. I’m an Australian who’s somehow lived half a life in Europe. Home these days is a sailboat, though I spend as much time in airports as I do at sea. I record these stories wherever I can find a patch of stillness, sometimes in a marina, sometimes in a gale, sometimes balancing my phone on a suitcase in a boarding lounge. These are stories from the sea, the road, and the places my mother once wandered. For anyone who’s ever looked out a train window and made up a story about it. Love Lyss. driftingnotes.substack.com

  1. 1D AGO

    I always stop for Annie (S4, E6)

    Annie is already reading when I arrive, the book open on her lap, the words upside down, the spine resting against her knees as if the book has decided that this is the correct orientation for today. She turns a page slowly, without fixing anything, without apologising to the text, without appearing to register that the world generally expects books to behave differently. I stop, I always do. Annie is a friend of my mother’s. She’s lovely, and reliably ready with a hug. She can still walk the corridors of this nursing home on the Gold Coast, while my mother can’t anymore, and so I stop for Annie in the way you stop for things that are still in motion. It feels like a light kind of care, not the heavy kind… something sweet. She’s sitting in a circle of chairs that has assembled itself without fuss or instruction, a talking shape more than a seating plan, the sort of arrangement that doesn’t demand conversation but keeps it available, just in case. When someone sits down, the geometry adjusts slightly, then settles again, as though the furniture understands its role is not to contain people, but to hold the possibility of exchange. I usually say hello to whoever’s in the circle, it feels rude not to I have learned that you don’t cross a circle without acknowledging it. Sometimes I ask what people are reading annnnnd sometimes they tell me, sometimes they just show me a cover, or tap the page they’ve been sitting with. It is as though ‘reading’ has become a location rather than a story, somewhere you can be without needing to progress. When I ask Annie about her upside down book, she answers generously, but not always about the book. Often she tells me about something else instead, the piano she likes to play, a place she lived, a person she loved, and the book stays inverted on her lap, doing the quiet work it’s been given, which seems to be holding the conversation open while her life moves into the space between us. People pass through while we talk. Walkers slow, then re-accelerate and wheelchairs pivot carefully. Staff move with that particular clarity that comes from knowing exactly how long everything takes. Someone pauses nearby, listens for a moment without joining, then keeps going. It takes a while to notice that this is not a destination, but a crossing point. Behind us is the television room, producing laughter no one here has actively selected. Ahead is the dining room, where cutlery is already clicking and lunch is egging on the clock. The circle sits between appetite and distraction, and no one seems in a hurry to resolve the tension. Only then do the shelves begin to announce themselves to me. They run wall to wall and floor to shoulder, crowded with books that appear to have arrived from former houses, former shelves, former versions of people. Crime leans into cookbooks, gardening presses up against grief and theology sits beside Dan Brown (of course). The collection feels less curated than accumulated, as if the books have gathered here not because they were chosen, but because no one objected strongly enough to send them away. Nothing here insists on being finished. Between the noise behind us and the hunger ahead, a book waits open on a wooden stand, its pages held apart by two black arms. A green car is taken apart across the page, engine, brakes, suspension, and a diagram doing its best to be useful without demanding attention. The book seems unconcerned with whether anyone completes it, it’s content to act as a place holder for stopping. People pause at the stand in passing, reading a paragraph while standing, nodding once, at the page, or perhaps at themselves, then moving on. Somewhere behind us, a puzzle piece clicks into place, or perhaps it doesn’t, and either outcome feels acceptable. At the long table beside the shelves, two puzzles are underway at once, a panda and an elephant, both mid-becoming, their pieces scattered (but not swept away). No one has insisted on finishing one before starting another. I sense that hands arrive and hands leave and progress is optional. My mother, Queenie, used to spend a lot of time in this room. She liked that you could sit with a book without being asked what you were getting out of it. She liked the circle, and the way reading could turn into talking, and talking could turn into company without anyone needing to decide which came first. Now, on days when she can’t make it here, I come anyway. I sit in the circle, I stop for Annie and I take care of the walkers. It’s a light duty version of care, but it counts. The book on the stand remains open and lunch continues to approach, the chairs welcome sitters and the puzzles wait. Nothing performs while nothing concludes. This room isn’t asking for memory, it feels like it’s offering permission, to stop briefly between noise and appetite, to read upside down and still be listened to, to arrive carrying fragments and leave feeling less alone. Thanks, for drifting with me. Lyss x Note > This season and episode were produced from within the Queensland Writers Centre at the Queensland State Library, as part of the Fishbowl Writers Residency. My sincere gratitude. Where do you find a place where nothing has to be finished? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit driftingnotes.substack.com

    6 min

  2. 3D AGO

    The hold shelf (S4, E5)

    The shelf sits just inside the entrance, level three, close enough to the doors that it feels less like furniture and more like part of the building’s circulation system, something you pass through rather than arrive at, unless you know it’s there and slow down deliberately, which I always do. This is the hold shelf… the place where the library puts books that people have already requested. Books you don’t stumble across, nor browse. Books that wait, with a small yellow slip tucked into their spine, until the person who asked for them comes to collect them. Outside it’s summer in south east Queensland, and people enter the library carrying the day with them, water bottles swinging, bags bumping against hips, hats coming off as they cross the threshold, conversations finishing mid sentence, before dispersing into the building in search of a chair, an aisle, a patch of quiet, a place to wander. A few don’t wander at all. A few turn almost immediately and head straight for the shelf, their bodies already oriented, their pace barely changing, as if the decision that brought them here happened somewhere else and this is simply the final step. I’ve started stopping by the hold shelf every second day or so, not because I’m collecting anything myself, but because it changes just enough to reward attention, and because it offers a different kind of reading altogether. The shelf looks ordinary, wooden, heavy, easily overlooked, the kind of thing most people pass without noticing, except for the yellow slips leaning out at slight angles, not decorative, carrying names and dates and codes that matter only briefly, and the large orange tub below, unapologetically plastic and modern, waiting to receive whatever doesn’t make the cut. Usually, the library does its best work elsewhere…. it encourages wandering and lays out recommendation shelves, full of optimism and good intentions, quietly suggesting things we think you’ll enjoy. I like that about it. I’ve spent whole afternoons letting my eyes lead, lifting books without purpose, following a word on a spine just to see where it goes. But this shelf isn’t offered, and you have to know it’s here. Because it doesn’t show taste, to me, it shows decision. People arrive at the hold shelf with their thinking already done, and you can see it in their bodies before you see it in their hands. Some walk straight in, barely slowing, reaching without hesitation, lifting and stacking books without rereading the titles, their grip confident and practised, already-decided hands treating the book not as a discovery but as a retrieval. Others approach more carefully, reading the slip twice, checking the name (is that me?!), adjusting a bag strap, shifting the book from one arm to the other before committing to the lift, and when they do take it, holding it closer than necessary, as if it’s fragile, or private, or both. A deeply personal choice, handled in the most impersonal way possible. No one browses here and no one wanders accidentally into interest. This isn’t a place for maybe…. I stand slightly to the side, close enough to see but not close enough to interrupt, aware that this shelf is designed for efficiency rather than observation, and that lingering is a quiet transgression. I borrow time anyway, watching how people pause, how long they wait when something isn’t ready, what their hands do when they arrive and leave empty. Confidence looks different here because it isn’t expressive or performative, to me it looks procedural. It has nothing to do with knowing what you like and everything to do with knowing what you need. I read the titles anyway, though not carefully, just enough to register them as signals rather than content, long books, dense ones, technical spines, older volumes, books that suggest someone went back instead of forward, looking for context rather than comfort. The shelf shifts and evolves over time. Some weeks I visit and it feels tight and serious, decision heavy, the kind of seriousness that presses quietly. Other weeks it loosens, a creative or oddly specific book appearing among the dense ones, tilting the tone for a moment before it settles again. I like noticing that, the way the shelf changes mood, like weather passing through an enclosed space, pressure you don’t need to name in order to feel. Typically, the ‘recommendation shelves say’ here’s something you might enjoy, here’s a path you could wander down. This shelf says something else entirely. I think it says someone already wandered, someone already thought and someone already decided. Each book here has travelled a small but determined path before arriving… a gap noticed, a question named, a search, a wait, and then this moment, the last step, where thinking becomes something solid you can carry under your arm. That’s why I come here, not to find something for myself, but to see what other people cared enough about to request in advance, what they wanted badly enough to wait for. A book is lifted and the yellow slip bends, then springs back slightly, relieved of duty, the shelf holding its shape anyway as another person steps forward almost immediately, filling the space with their presence. A man arrives quickly, lifts two volumes without checking the titles again, stacks them neatly under his arm and leaves, the doors opening and closing behind him without ceremony. A woman arrives more slowly, reads the slip twice, adjusts her grip, and tucks the book closer to her body before turning away, the difference subtle but unmistakable. Someone else comes and finds nothing waiting. They stand there briefly, hands empty, eyes moving as if something might appear if they give it another second. It doesn’t. They leave carrying only that (my heart breaks a little for them). By the time I move on, the shelf already looks different, one space wider and another slip gone while the already-decided books wait just long enough to be claimed. Thanks for drifting with me, Lyss x Note > This season and episode were produced from within the Queensland Writers Centre at the Queensland State Library, as part of the Fishbowl Writers Residency. My sincere gratitude. Where do you go first when you need a book? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit driftingnotes.substack.com

    9 min

  3. JAN 28

    Always open (S4, E4)

    I didn’t expect to find a book exchange in Pinnacle, a small place in rural North Queensland that is usually described in terms of distance rather than presence, a place measured by how far it is from somewhere else rather than by what might quietly be waiting there. It was hot when I arrived, the kind of heat that presses into your shoulders and slows your movements before you notice yourself yielding to it, and the verandah of the Pinnacle Playhouse and Cultural Centre offered the familiar relief of shade without ceremony. The cupboard sits there, freestanding against the weatherboard wall of the Queenslander, painted yellow like the building itself, its proportions suggesting a former life indoors, doors once opened for plates or cups, shelves set at practical heights, the kind of furniture made to be useful rather than admired. Now it holds books. What stopped me was the handwriting. White marker, written directly onto the glass, not centred, not framed, not protected from weather or touch, the letters uneven in a way that felt human rather than careless. FREE BOOK EXCHANGE.Always open.Everyone welcome. The words sit over their own reflections, over the verandah, over whoever happens to stand there long enough to read them, refusing to belong entirely to the cupboard or to the person in front of it. Inside, the books are arranged without system or display logic, cookbooks pressed up against war histories, self-help leaning into fantasy, some standing upright as if trying to keep order, others tilting together in a way that suggests speed rather than intention, as though someone reached in, chose what they needed, and trusted the rest to look after itself. Out here, culture is often spoken about as something that happens elsewhere, and places like this rarely get mentioned when people talk about literary life or artistic ambition or where stories are supposed to live. And yet here it is, in the heat, on a verandah, written straight onto glass as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. When I stepped back, a couple had taken the bench nearby, three books spread between them in the shade, and she was reading the back covers out loud, slowly and carefully, as if giving each book a proper chance to explain itself, while he listened, asked questions, and thought about the answers. They talked about which two they would take with them. The words on the glass remained where they were, doing their work … Always open. Where have you found stories, culture, or care waiting somewhere you weren’t told to look? ps if you liked this, you might like my story about reading rocks, another story from a remote part of Spain This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit driftingnotes.substack.com

    7 min

  4. JAN 25

    Books that belong to the day (S4, E3)

    In Diane’s house, books don’t belong to rooms. They belong to her day. I understand this standing in front of a ladder, heavy, solid, unapologetic, leaning into a wall of books that have not been arranged to impress anyone, only to be reached, used, and returned to, again and again, across years that have been busy with other things. Outside, this is north-west Queensland, cattle country, wetlands that flood and dry again and heeeeeaaaaaat that arrives early and stays. Distance governs everything here, about when you start, how you plan and how long it takes to get anywhere at all. Browsing for books is not a casual activity and neither is acquiring books. They arrive because someone wanted them, and because there was time and intention enough to bring them home, often in a distant busy ‘big city’. The shelves hold children’s books that have outlived childhood, Australian classics with sun faded covers, local histories that feel heavier than their page count, and whole runs of authors, book after book after book, a lifetime of writing made visible in a single glance, the long arc of someone else’s work quietly occupying space. Diane wanted a proper library for most of her life. Not a reading nook, not a shelf in a hallway, not a corner borrowed from something else…. a library. She built this one here, where books don’t arrive by accident and where the idea of “just popping in” does not apply to much of anything. In Diane’s house, books move. By the door hangs a tote, bright fabric in pinks and blues, zipped, light, the sort of bag that can live in a car for weeks without complaint, that doesn’t mind dust or heat or being grabbed quickly when someone says they’ll just check the fence, or just be a minute, or just see what’s going on over there. Inside are always two books. One fiction. One non-fiction. So the mood can change without friction. So the day can tilt without disruption. Diane grew up as a cane farmer’s daughter, in a life shaped by early mornings, close attention to weather, and work that begins before reflection has time to form. That rhythm doesn’t leave you. It simply becomes the background tempo to everything else. And still, she reads…. On the deck, in the car, at agricultural shows, in the heat. While other things are happening, while conversations stretch on, while engines cool, while the day takes the time it needs. Not instead of life, but alongside it, keeping the hours inhabited. She keeps an address book, but it isn’t for addresses. It holds names of authors and titles she’s heard mentioned, on the radio, from friends, in passing, written down carefully, without urgency. When she finds a book and reads it, she crosses the name out. And when I step away from the shelves, nothing closes and book waits, marked, exactly where it was left. Nothing is finished, nothing needs to be. What small reading habit or daily system helps you stay present when life keeps interrupting? If this story made you think about books and the places that hold them, there’s another drift that sits nearby … my story about borrowing books in Australia, and how they ask for care rather than loyalty. You can find it herehttps://driftingnotes.substack.com/p/borrowed-books-demand-care-not-loyalty And if what stayed with you was less about books and more about buildings that remember work, places shaped by repetition and sound, there’s a story about living inside an old printing press in New Zealand, where the walls once hummed all day.That one lives here:https://driftingnotes.substack.com/p/a-building-that-hummed No rush, they keep their place. Thanks for drifting with me. Love Lyss xx This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit driftingnotes.substack.com

    6 min

  5. JAN 15

    Borrowed books demand care, not loyalty (S4, E2)

    For about three steps, the sound follows me, then it disappears. White tiles give way to red and cream carpet, and the building takes over and footsteps soften. Bags stop announcing themselves and it seems that even the shoes seem to understand where they are. The light is bright enough to read without shadows and soft enough not to demand attention. It feels like a place that has already decided how people should behave, without ever needing to say so. I am inside the State Library Queensland, spread across four levels, on a warm day. On every level, books can be borrowed. The building is not organised to keep knowledge in one room, but to let it travel. Near the entrance, librarians stand at an open desk and greet people as they arrive. Further back, quiet conversations unfold about what someone is reading or thinking of reading next. I notice that not all noise belongs here, buuuuuuut enthusiasm does. People seem to fall into a few patterns…. some borrow desks and time, setting themselves up carefully with laptops and headphones. Others stride straight to the holds shelf to collect books they have already chosen. And some wander slowly, letting themselves stop when a title or image catches their eye. My name is waiting on the holds shelf, tucked between book spines. Lifting them is heavier than expected, gosh, did I need to order seven? And I immediately regret not bringing an extra bag. At the counter, a librarian pauses on one title and tells me she loved it. It is a small exchange, but it turns a private choice into something shared, and I feel warm fuzzies. Inside each book is a yellow slip with a return date printed clearly. Borrowed books feel different from owned ones. They smell like paper and plastic covers, and they ask for care. They cannot go to the beach or camping in bad weather, they need clean places and time set aside for them. Owning books is easier, especially on a kindle. In contrast, I feel that borrowed books expect attention. They assume you will make space, physically and mentally, and that you will return them. They do not demand loyalty, but they allow curiosity and experimentation. Thanks for drifting with me, Lyss x Note > This season and episode were produced from within the Queensland Writers Centre at the Queensland State Library, as part of the Fishbowl Writers Residency. My sincere gratitude. What does borrowing give you that owning doesn’t? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit driftingnotes.substack.com

    6 min

  6. JAN 13

    Library slow, not city fast (S4 E1)

    Inside the library, the air points down. It keeps the cool in and the humidity out, and I feel my shoulders soften as soon as I step inside, like my body has been waiting for permission to stop negotiating. It’s Brisbane in high summer, when the heat presses close and the river moves at pace. The State Library sits right on the edge of it all, cool, public, free, a place where people read, think, wait, and mostly leave each other alone in the best possible way. I like that about it… I like places that don’t ask for a performance. Outside is different. The subtropical air comes at me from the side and interrupts my breathing halfway through an inhale, sounds travel further than they should and shade stops being decorative and starts being persuasive. Somewhere along the walk, my shoulders drop. The river appears before I’m quite ready for it, opening the space up and changing the scale of things. Boats slide past and the wind pushes and releases in a rhythm I don’t control, tugging at fabric and then letting go, over and over again. Across the water, the city stacks itself into order, offices, courts, apartments, traffic, all movement and structure, the people inside too far away to see. From here, it’s just systems doing what systems do. Nothing pauses. Eventually, the pull turns me back toward the library, toward the cool air and the shared quiet, toward people reading books and lifting chairs so they don’t scrape, toward a place where nothing argues back and attention can rest for a while. For a bit, it’s good to be held there, between inside and outside. Thanks for drifting with me. Lyss x Note > This season and episode were produced from within the Queensland Writers Centre at the Queensland State Library, as part of the Fishbowl Writers Residency. My sincere gratitude. What’s your version of library slow, and how often do you actually let yourself keep it? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit driftingnotes.substack.com

    7 min

  7. JAN 8

    A building that hummed (S3 E10)

    I am sleeping in a building that used to hum. Not the gentle hum of lights or lifts, but a louder…. more muscular sound. The kind that ran through the night and into people’s bones. This place once stayed awake so an entire city could wake up informed. Now it is quiet enough to hear my socks on tile. The building stands on the corner of Victoria Street, solid and calm, as if it still expects the city to behave. It was finished in 1928 and built for a newspaper called ‘The Dominion. Stone walls, copper details, wide corridors designed to carry noise and movement, I get the feeling that this was a place made for urgency and belief. Back then, the news was not ‘content’, it was not abstract. It was weight. Ink stained hands, metal letters set one by one, pages stacked, lifted, hauled down corridors and into trucks before morning. Stories here, became physical things. They could tip a bench if you were careless and they could bruise your foot if you dropped them. People worked through the night here so Wellington could begin its day. Today, people live here and Tom and I stay in the building as (very lucky) guests. I walk its hallways in socks, holding a glass of champagne, careful not to spill it. The same floors that once felt the rush of deadlines now carry quieter movements. Friends pass between apartments. A lift hums and stops and Billy the fuzzy white cat sleeps through the entire history of print media without apology (or interest) The building still holds its confidence, and it curves with the street instead of fighting it, as if it knows the city will always have the last word. The walls are lined with Art Deco patterns from a time that believed clarity could tame chaos. Friends nowadays walk the hallway in comfortable pants and birkenstocks, glasses are carried carefully and borrowed space is treated gently. The building no longer asks for strength, it allows for pause. While I think that some places harden with age, some, simply, grow grand. This one has. Thanks for drifting with me. Lyss xx ps Have you ever been inside a place with a second life? Tell me about it here …. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit driftingnotes.substack.com

    7 min

  8. 12/31/2025

    From keel to kiln (S3 E9)

    I spent an afternoon inside a pottery studio, Studio18, on Waiheke Island, the kind of place where nothing is finished in a hurry, where tools hang where they’re needed, clay waits and light comes and goes without asking permission. The studio belongs to our mate Tim. He’s sailed the Mediterranean in recent years, living aboard and learning, over time, how much patience weather demands. Now he works with clay and what surprised me wasn’t the shift, but how familiar it all felt. I saw the same attention, the same respect for sequence and the same understanding that force rarely improves things. I saw how skills don’t vanish when a life changes shape…. they find a new way to be useful. Outside the studio, Waiheke moves at its own pace yet inside, time thickens and I feel an invitation hiding in the clay. To notice what in our own lives is still becoming, to recognise the knowledge we’ve carried further than we realised annnnnnnnnnd ahhhhh to let time do some of the work, instead of arguing with it. Thanks for drifting with me, Lyss xx This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit driftingnotes.substack.com

    6 min
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About

Short, voice-driven travel stories, made for anyone curious about the quieter corners of the world. I’m an Australian who’s somehow lived half a life in Europe. Home these days is a sailboat, though I spend as much time in airports as I do at sea. I record these stories wherever I can find a patch of stillness, sometimes in a marina, sometimes in a gale, sometimes balancing my phone on a suitcase in a boarding lounge. These are stories from the sea, the road, and the places my mother once wandered. For anyone who’s ever looked out a train window and made up a story about it. Love Lyss. driftingnotes.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Lyss
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    43
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Lyss
  • Show Website
    Drifting Notes