tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30556797177176282322024-03-14T17:46:34.657+11:00Harriet's Treatit's all about the wordsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger127125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-38054920268601814432022-11-14T09:39:00.000+11:002022-11-14T09:39:30.421+11:00Tweet disposition<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Watching the destruction of Twitter, live on Twitter, is
something of a spectator sport. It is unfolding in real time, this complete
implosion of a ‘site’ once revered by wordsmiths, academics, social justice
warriors, comedians, poets, animal lovers, sometimes people who identified as
all of the above. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span> </span>The most compelling thing about watching this transpire is
that it is happening with the written word alone. From the perspective of one
entering the Twittersphere to read other people’s Tweets (which is really all I
have ever found it useful for), nothing has changed. The format is the same.
The layout of the site is the same. It is only the tone, when you start
reading, that has experienced a momentous shift in a matter of days. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> There is
so much sadness, and self-reflection, and doubt, creeping into these voices
that were once just there, just because they could be. They were steadfast, and
clever, and I never had cause to doubt that they would always be that way. I
didn’t know these people, much as I often wanted to. I knew very little about
their lives either, unless they shared some photos of their dog or their latest
holiday/adventure. But they became company in a strange way, a little light relief
in the darkness of the online atmosphere. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> I twigged fairly early on that there were about three personality
types on Twitter, at least in the circles where I found myself. There were
academics, tortured and slightly self-obsessed but in an authoritative way.
Then writers, also tortured and self-obsessed but more self-deprecating. And
comedians, who were quick-witted and hilarious to watch as long as you didn’t apply
too much psychoanalysis to their emotional state. </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> In the past few days, the mood has been irrevocably altered.
There are those who are just there to have a go at Elon (admittedly pretty easy
to do), with slightly dark memes and even darker innuendos about billionaires
and the state of the world. Sometimes when they say, ‘the world’, I think they
mean Twitter. But I think they believe that when they say it. I think some
people have morphed the idea of Twitter into their idea of the world, complete
with beautiful caring friends, dogs, cats, gardens. It’s a whole simulated
life. </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Then, of course, there are those who have been around since
the very beginning. Since it wasn’t even cool to be there. I can never tell if
these people are being ironic and self-deprecating or if they really believe
they are uber-cool and nobody would have ever found Twitter if it wasn’t for
their magnetic personality. But regardless, they are there in multiples. And of
course, they claim that in the beginning, people found each other on Twitter
and then met in real life and it was love at first sight and they formed the
deepest, most authentic attachment with all their new friends that will never
be affected by anything as superficial as a billionaire buying and ruining the
site of their very first meeting. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Maybe I’m cynical, but I find it hard to take
all these people at their word. Ultimately, what really fascinates me is that,
despite the advances of technology where we can form deep and lasting
friendships with people from the other side of the world and converse with them
on multiple subjects, the same personality traits emerge. It’s still like Year
9 at high school, when the popular group all had the latest spiral perm but the
head popular girl had to get it first, then her minions followed in no particular
order because nobody cared. But everyone remembered that head girl was the
first to step bravely into the world of the spiral perm, unsure how it would go
for her but determined that it would be great.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> I’m thinking of people I really admire when I say this, so
it’s not without its qualifications. The two who come to mind are really brilliant
writers, and good people as far as I can tell (although far is exactly where I
am in terms of their actual lives and personalities). But still they are
spewing forth these copious threads, regaling us all with how brilliant Twitter
<i>used </i>to be, how they will miss it so, how they do not know where they
will go now, and it all gives me huge <i>Gone With the Wind </i>vibes, in that
scene where Scarlett stands at the door, pleading with Rhett in that pitiful
Southern belle routine that Vivien Leigh made her own: “But Rhett, Rhett! Where
shall I go, what shall I do?”. I think you know the next bit.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> On Friday, there are murmurings about a thing called
Mastodon, which is apparently a platform some Twitter stalwarts are considering
moving to. There is hesitation, and the important addendum to followers that “I
won’t go anywhere without telling you first”. I am sure this is
well-intentioned. I am also sure there are people out there who would almost
lose their minds if they lost this connection with somebody they assume they
know, or even assume is a close personal friend. But it all seems so fraught to
me. </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> By Saturday evening, the Mastodon thing has been explored
and found to be seriously wanting. There are multiple ‘servers’ depending on your
interests, and how will we know to find each other if we don’t know which server
we’re both at? It reminds me of those days when you had to actually make a plan
to meet your friends at the shopping mall on a Thursday night, because there
was no such thing as a mobile phone to text them with if you got your wires
crossed and ended up at Kleins when you should have been at Hot Property. <br /></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> On Sunday, the voices of dissent are drowning out most of
the other content on Twitter, which I guess would be clue number one that the
whole thing is about to disappear up its own orifice. I hear some strong but
solo voices saying they will stay to fight the system, because after all
Twitter is all about the people and it’s always the people who have to struggle
against unfair and corrupt systems, otherwise they would just be allowed to run
roughshod over humanity and democracy and right about now I imagine that voice
gradually fading into nothingness as it disappears mysteriously into a dark
cell, or over the edge of a cliff. <br /></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> None of this is to say that I am not affected by these
latest developments. I will be sad to lose this place where I can find
information, or witty commentary, or cat photos, at a moment’s notice whenever
I need them. It is borderline alarming to think that these things, once all
gathered in the same place exactly where you knew where to find them, might now
be scattered to the winds. What is more alarming are the recent headlines I’ve
seen about Elon spouting Republican PR on his new platform, and the news that
he has stood down whole teams of people from Twitter headquarters, including
those whose job was to manage the whole ‘human rights’ thing and make sure nobody
figuratively set fire to the whole place. Now, it is a looming possibility that
the new CEO will do that <i>literally.</i></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> On Monday, there are people who have gone to planet Mastodon
and tried to get <i>in</i> but it wouldn’t let them, and what could this
possibly mean except that it is clearly an inferior place and if it won’t have
them, well they don’t want to be there and that’s that. So they are back in
Twitter, waiting sullenly, like a teenager who’s been locked out of the house
because they forgot their spare key. And they’re only here because the mall is on
fire. </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> By now, the whole fabric of Twitter is made up of people making
witty/cynical analogies between ‘this bin-fire of a site’ and other diabolically
bad situations. But as I mentioned before, it’s all just <i>text. </i>There is
no actual bin fire, no actual ‘site’, no real friendships at risk (if they are
indeed real), and ultimately no ‘place’ in which to locate all this chaos,
except in individual users’ emotional landscapes. When did we all become so
attached to these ‘sites’ and attribute them so much meaning? Did it happen
gradually, while we weren’t paying attention? </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> By now, the vibe has become one of panic. People are running
backwards and forwards from Twitter to Mastodon, trying to find servers,
posting their ridiculously long-winded new account names lest anyone lose them
in the crush. And the poor admins at Mastodon are overwhelmed by this sudden
interest in their once-marginal online platform, unable to keep up with all the
newcomers who are used to being served <i>immediately if not sooner</i>. </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> I guess I am thinking I will just watch it all unfold. What
option do I have? It’s not like I have any followers really, and I have
certainly never cultivated anything like a following on Twitter. I prefer to
follow, is what I’m saying. I am following the latest shenanigans with absolute
fascination, and it doesn’t show any signs of getting less interesting any time
soon. I have no way of knowing how this will end. Nobody does. Which makes it
totally on-trend for 2022 (and 2020 and 2021 for that matter) as well as being
decent entertainment. <br /></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p><style><span style="font-family: georgia;">@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</span></style></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-43704971256356832152021-03-15T17:46:00.000+11:002021-03-15T17:46:54.533+11:00Into the wild<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The words “Wild Writing Retreat” were written in my
favourite typeface, as if I needed another reason to want a part of it. It was
early December. The retreat was at the end of February - far enough in the distance for me
to indulge my fantasies of sneaking away from all my commitments for SEVEN
WHOLE DAYS, without having to seriously think about everything that would
entail. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Even through Christmas and New
Year, I wanted it to look forward to. I was due to begin a creative writing PhD
on February 1, and such was my desire to be a wild writer that I, somewhat
optimistically, asked the university if I could access all my first year’s
allotment of research funding to (partly) pay for the retreat. I knew that in
the COVID climate I would not have opportunities to travel overseas for a while,
even potentially interstate, and equally I believed this retreat, three hours
from home, would give me some bearings to follow in the first year of my
postgraduate studies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The university
agreed. We did some juggling with the household budget and found the remaining
funds to pay for my entry into the wild. And I waited.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I had never been away from my husband, nor any of my three
children, for a period as long as seven days. And while the thought sometimes
filled me with dread – what if I had a terrible bout of homesickness and
couldn’t be consoled by a group of strangers? – it also seemed daring and long
overdue. My eldest daughter is capable, dependable, and also 18 so technically
an adult. I would miss them, but I knew my family would be okay without me. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As it happened, I’d never experienced being in a place away
from home and family the way I did on this retreat. I missed them, enjoyed
talking with them most nights to catch up on their days, but it felt like I
compartmentalised myself so effectively that I never experienced the slightest
sense of homesickness. From arrival at Springfield Farm, I was all in. Over the
course of the next seven days, we all experienced deep connection with the land
on which we met – a gathering place, described as the centre of a kind of wheel
that takes in Dharug, Gundungurra and Dharawal country. We connected to it by writing
about it, by meditating on it – led on one clear morning by the glorious
Indigenous author and poet Kirli Saunders – by digging in it to plant she-oaks
for the Glossy Black Cockatoo to eventually eat, and just by sitting in it,
witnessing it, appreciating it. The she-oaks weren’t the only ones opening up
to new ground.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There were challenges, of course. Challenges to ways of
thinking, of being. Some led to change and others to confirmation, but all were
ultimately welcome because this experience would not have been the same without
them. On the sixth day of the retreat, having not left the property since
arriving, I skipped lunch and drove into the nearest town where I found myself
in a beautiful bookshop, embracing capitalism and art and, ultimately, that elusive
thing social media influencers have defined as self-care. I sat in a café and
filled my belly and my soul with comfort, in the form of a large chai latte and
a cake made with orange, almond and just a hint of religion. I returned to the
farm a changed woman – or maybe just closer to the woman I already am, having
given myself permission to partake in some things I really love.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">On the second-last night of a writing retreat which
involved, for me personally, not a lot of writing and very little retreating,
there was a last-minute change to the schedule. Post-dinner activities would
now involve wine, and music, and dancing. The venue had also changed, from
indoors to outdoors. We gathered at the fire pit in the middle of a field,
sheltered in a slight dip below the main house, bordered on one side by a stand
of birch trees and with views out across the range. The seating was a series of
greyed and weathered tree stumps, arranged in a circle around an oversized iron
platter of fire. At first we sat on the stumps, which were large enough in
diameter to seat two people comfortably, pre-COVID, but as soon as the blip of
the Bluetooth speaker sounded, we were on our feet – dancing on plinths,
reliving our youths, singing into the dying sunset and hearing a thousand souls
– including our own – echo back to us. The night fell and we kept on singing,
arguing good-naturedly about song choices and jostling for DJ duties. It might
have been any lounge room at any party in any house in Newcastle in the 1990s.
It felt familiar, and safe, and celebratory. The opposite word, in the English
language, for the verb retreat? Advance.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">For several days after returning home, I felt myself walking
in two worlds. Through our WhatsApp group, set up for the retreat and
continuing as a kind of lifeline beyond it, I knew I was not the only one. I
had one foot still in Springfield Farm, the other back home, and neither one
was willing to concede. It made it difficult to walk and hard to think
straight, but I wasn’t in the mood for straight lines anyway. I was still
curving my way around unfamiliar roads and dirt tracks, breathing in the mist
of waterfalls, marvelling at giant cavernous valleys, missing the company of
strangers who had so quickly become friends. So much of life is wanting to be
in one place or another and not managing either, but learning to navigate the
spaces in between.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I will never forget the women I met at Springfield in the
dying days of Summer 2021. Something in me wonders if we weren’t all just
emerging from our most difficult year, from trauma and separation and isolation
and fear, into the arms of one another – the way a newborn child, when
delivered by caesarean, raises its shivering arms into the foreign air of an
operating theatre, cradled by a gown with a person inside it, in the absence
for that single moment of the flesh and blood it has known for the past nine
months. I do not really question that we were all doing that, in our own way,
and I know there was a reason we were all gathered there together, at that
place for those days. We all delivered ourselves to a farm south of Sydney, we
all saw the light and we reached for it with our hands and our words. How
miraculous it was. How singularly breathtaking to be a part of it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KC0W2ZYbaiM/YE7_Q6LzLII/AAAAAAAAAjw/y_lu9klsZNEII-n0yjHbSoM4x8XzbukggCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/E9F514F3-80E7-471C-8350-EBDE84ECB76B.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KC0W2ZYbaiM/YE7_Q6LzLII/AAAAAAAAAjw/y_lu9klsZNEII-n0yjHbSoM4x8XzbukggCLcBGAsYHQ/w480-h640/E9F514F3-80E7-471C-8350-EBDE84ECB76B.heic" width="480" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
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{page:WordSection1;}</span></style></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-797671655297382772020-06-16T09:45:00.000+10:002020-06-16T09:45:28.426+10:00on monuments and trauma<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"><b style="line-height: 1;"><i style="line-height: 1;">Viola: </i></b><i style="line-height: 1;">A blank, my lord. She never told her love,<o:p></o:p></i></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"> Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">And with a green and yellow melancholy<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">She sat like patience on a monument,<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">We men may say more, swear more, but indeed<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Our shows are more than will, for still we prove<o:p></o:p></font></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"><i style="line-height: 1;">Much in our vows, but little in our love. </i>(Shakespeare 6)<i style="line-height: 1;"><o:p></o:p></i></font></div>
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<font size="2">AT the age of 22, an impossibly human girl named Jean found herself attracted to a man made entirely of stone. They were opposites. She was a mess of wounded flesh and exposed nerve endings. He had been dead for more than a century. He stood in a park named after him, overlooking the city’s accumulated misery. She was at a nearby pub, being farewelled by a bunch of drunken journos. When she flew for England on a one-way ticket, she would miss them only slightly less than the broken feeling this city had left in her bones. </font><div><font size="2"><br /> It was a Friday night at the end of 1995. Jean was drunk. She had smoked the first and last cigarette of her life but would never forget the feeling of burning tar in her throat as she crossed the road from the pub to the park without looking for cars and climbed the near-vertical concrete steps to the edge of the continent. The towering statue of James Fletcher was waiting for her. </font></div><div><font size="2"><br />She could feel the translucent forms of souls only slightly more conflicted than hers. They had walked a few steps further and stepped over the white safety fence as though they were sneaking off to a picnic, only to leap and break their bodies, like their spirits, at the base of the cliff. Jean felt them pulling at her in the warm salted darkness but she locked eyes with James Fletcher and the weight of his plinth-bound presence and something in her refused to let him go. </font><div><font size="2"><br />She communed with his concrete body because it was neither flesh nor blood. She could pour out her despair, her self-hatred and the feeling of emptiness that threatened to annihilate her and he would not recoil. His hands would never seek to warm themselves on her body and he would never reach out to claim her as his own. He would give her nothing, which was all she had ever asked for. She knew she could not move him, but she also knew she wanted him to stay exactly where he was.<br /> <br /> Adjacent to the local constabulary and within the judicial precinct, Jean beseeched James Fletcher to answer her. He stood calmly over her and she begged him to relieve her suffering. He surveyed the city, silent and unwavering, and appeared to revel in his own immortality and her hopeless inability to grasp the functional requirements of life. In her drunken stupor, she could see only one thing clearly: his face. She had no God and no faith but perhaps this was the closest she would ever come to religion, this pleading for guidance, a crazed and beer-blurred serenade by a spurned lover, a sinner separated from the flock. This stone man represented every man who had ever touched her or even looked at her, and she remembered them all in the same way the body holds trauma, like a bank vault that’s already been broken into but all evidence of the desecration lost. </font>
<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 29.333335876464844px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><o:p> .........................</o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;">My major creative work investigates the role of monuments and memory in recollections of trauma. It depicts actual events and began life as creative non-fiction but I feel more comfortable and even empowered by telling this story from a third-person point of view. I believe my work sits in the often contested space between narrative fiction and autobiography, an area in which there is room for me to play without encountering the “conflict between life and writing” (Sutherland) and the inevitable question: my truth or yours? I have drawn on the memoir novel</span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><i style="line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">The Last Thread</font></i><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;">, by Michael Sala, in which he documents the early trauma of his life through the character of Michaelis. I have drawn also on the memoir</span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><i style="line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Reckoning</font></i><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;">, by Magda Szubanski, in which she weaves the wartime history of Poland through personal recollections of growing up uncertain of her sexuality in the Melbourne suburbs during the 1960s. My experiences with sexual abuse and the resulting trauma have been revisited in recent years through the lens of Clementine Ford’s self-described manifesto</span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><i style="line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Fight Like A Girl</font></i><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;">, in which she addresses her own trauma by taking a refreshingly reactionary stance against male toxicity and its impact on girls and women. I have also drawn on several essays in Anne Teresa Demo and Bradford Vivian’s collection </span><i style="line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Rhetoric, Remembrance and Visual Form: Sighting Memory </font></i><span style="line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">i</font></span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;">n investigating the roles of history, place, monuments and memory in the perpetuation of trauma.</span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1; text-indent: 36pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Do we build monuments to our trauma? Do we set them in concrete and let them cast shadows over us for the rest of our lives? In August 2017 a video circumnavigated the globe in a matter of hours. It showed a group of people chanting and wailing as they brought down a statue of a Confederate soldier outside a courthouse in Durham, North Carolina. (Jackson and Ellis) The backdrop of the video was the death a few days earlier of a young woman named Heather Heyer, who had been protesting against a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Days later, a group of protesters tired of being looked down upon by old-school white supremacists on monuments took matters into their own hands. In the viral video, there are loud cheers as the tin soldier is duly unmounted from his lofty pedestal. The metal flattens into the ground like putty, constitutionally bereft of any resistance to the revolution. Indigenous journalist Stan Grant was prompted by these scenes to question the “damaging myth”, perpetuated by monuments around Australia, that the continent was discovered and not invaded by Captain James Cook (Grant). Through non-fictional narrative and historical research, my work asks where is our resistance to a history that doesn’t recognise our grief? How can we shift our trauma if it is fixed in its place, rooted in the ground and reinforced in stone?<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">In Michael Sala’s <i style="line-height: 1;">The Last Thread</i>, the setting of Newcastle is a palpable presence. The streets and landscapes described in the book are very familiar to me and in some cases represent the sites of my own trauma. The following passage describes the closest thing to ancient monuments in the city in which Michaelis seeks to recreate the comforting traditions and memories of his childhood in Holland:<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">This part of the town has an older feel, a bit like Europe – the sprawling cathedral above the mall, like something medieval, the ruins of Fort Scratchley on the headland, with cannons that once fired on Japanese submarines. Near the remains of the fort is the break wall and above it the lighthouse. Back from this extend the narrow streets and century-old terraces ravaged by salt. Past that, hidden on the top of a hill, is the school where he first went as a boy six years ago . . . walking with Mum towards the sky through the corridor of figs. (Sala 140-141)<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">My story incorporates the landmark sites and monuments of Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle police station, the old legal precinct, The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate building and the adjacent parkland and cliffs above the ever-present ocean. As Bradford and Demo explain, “physical locations and environments constitute deeply evocative loci of memory. . . . to view landscapes and cityscapes is to remember the past imprinted and continuously reprinted on their natural or physical contours” (7). Beyond bricks and mortar monuments, our trauma is often embedded through our body’s memory in the fabric of the landscape itself.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 1cm;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Sala’s central character Michaelis/Michael lives vicariously through his older brother Con, who is more independent, adventurous and daring than him. Through the course of the book we hear suggestions of Con’s deeply traumatic past, hints but never outright elaborations of sexual abuse at the hands of his father. The narrative reflects a culture in which such abuse is a known but concealed truth, rendered intangible because it never fully exists as fact or fiction. It exists in the contested space of memory, between the past and the present. It is this space in which Michaelis’s mother perpetually resides, between her own past and present and between Newcastle and Holland. She carries the artefacts of her memory in the form of her records – “Neil Young, Neil Sedaka, The Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas . . . from Holland to Australia and back again” (Sala 93). Ernesto Pujol relates the story of his parents’ emigration from Cuba in 1961 and the state-imposed “home inventory” which transferred ownership of all their personal belongings or “visible memories” to the government (181). As Pujol explains, the inventory was “the task of detaching memory from object, so that you could take yourself with you, so that your heart did not remain behind” (181). In my own story, the role of visible memory in perpetuating trauma is reinforced when Jean visits the site of the recently demolished Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate building and finds enormous freedom in the space where it used to be.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 1cm;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">In <i style="line-height: 1;">The Last Thread</i>, during the family’s short-lived relocation to Holland and a visit to the war museum, Michaelis struggles to understand the enormity of the Holocaust and asks an innocent question of his mother which reveals two very human but perhaps flawed perspectives of trauma and its place in memory.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"> ‘Why did we go there today?’<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">‘It’s important to know what happened.’<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">‘Why?’<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">‘I don’t know, if enough people know, if they really know about that sort of thing, maybe it won’t happen again.’<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">. . . He doesn’t understand how knowing about something can stop it from happening again. It’s never been that way for him. Like when he crosses his legs under the table. He’s eight and he’s been doing it forever. When he crosses his legs, Dirk kicks him in the shin. Once the pain has died down, Michaelis just does the same thing again. It is called forgetting. (Sala 99)<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">This concept is particularly relevant to my own character of Jean, who experiences this childhood phenomenon of “forgetting”, or of removing herself from the trauma, during a sexual assault by a trusted male psychology student in the walled grounds of a mental hospital:<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 1;"><o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">She is lost and struggling to breathe when her childhood survival instinct kicks in, honed in the year before kindergarten when she was unable to resist the lure of the clothes racks in Kmart and would hide herself underneath them and sing quietly to herself. She would be found by her panicked mother after long minutes of searching. <i style="line-height: 1;">Just stay here and someone will come.</i><o:p></o:p></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">When the trauma is repeated some years later by a different perpetrator, Jean leaps immediately to the conclusion that it must have been due to “something she had done”. This confirms the concept that, perhaps especially for women with regard to sexual assault and abuse, being aware of the potential for trauma cannot necessarily stop it from happening. <o:p></o:p></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 1cm;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">In <i style="line-height: 1;">Reckoning</i>, Szubanski’s references to the fallen monuments of Warsaw, where her father was born, represent the trauma her father experienced but never reveals. It runs deeply but silently in the family’s fabric, an inter-generational trauma that Szubanski feels the impact of but struggles to understand. Her visit to Auschwitz with her parents in 1992 (Szubanski 256), like Michaelis’s visit to the war museum, illustrates the role of monuments in trauma. A haunting legacy to one of the world’s greatest traumas, the former Nazi concentration camp attracts hundreds of tourists each year, perhaps seeking some tangible hold on the incomprehensible horror of the Holocaust. Szubanski describes the buildings themselves as “Blunt broken ruins, bits of concrete upended like outcroppings shifted by vast geological trauma” (Szubanski 256), as if the now invisible human trauma had somehow caused a deep seismic impact. She describes it as “hell on earth”, and “the world’s shrine and cemetery”, left to the custodianship of the deeply damaged Polish race (Szubanski 257). The notion of geological remnants of trauma is revisited soon after, as Szubanski recounts the dual mythical and scientific origins of Polish amber. In each version the golden substance is created through trauma, whether it be as the tears shed by Phaeton’s grieving sisters the Heliades in Ovid’s “sunshine and sorrow” myth (Szubanski 257) or the trauma of trees which secrete the resin to heal their wounds. The substance is transformed “over vast geological time” (Szubanski 258) into fossilised amber but remains buried beneath the floor of the Baltic Sea until it is freed by “tides and cataclysms ” (Szubanski 258) and floats on the salt water to begin another life as a treasure, sometimes with a visible relic of the trauma - like an insect - trapped inside. In her introductory chapter, Szubanski describes the 15<sup style="line-height: 1;">th</sup>century surgical practice in which holes were cut into patients’ skulls to extract “the stone of madness” and relieve them from their symptoms.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">I swear sometimes I can feel that stone in my head. A palpable presence, an unwelcome thing that I want to squeeze out of my skull like a plum pip, using nothing but the sheer pressure of thought and concentration. If I just think hard enough . . . <o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">That stone was my father’s legacy to me, his keepsake. Beneath his genial surface, somewhere in the depths, I would sometimes catch a glimpse – of a smooth, bone-coloured stone. A stone made of calcified guilt and shame. I could feel it.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 42.55pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">I can feel it still. (Szubanski 2)<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Like the James Fletcher statue central to my own work, Szubanski’s embodied trauma is made of stone. It carries with it a heaviness and permanence like monuments to war heroes or founding fathers, those through which “societies outsource the burden of remembering” (Ruohonen 210). Yet when we carry it as our own personal monument of trauma, experiencing it with our body’s memory, it can be an agonising and debilitating burden. I have tried to emphasise this sense of heaviness in my descriptions of the landscape and sites of trauma in my own story. References to the “stone man”, “the weight of his plinth-bound presence” and “his concrete body” in the passages where Jean communes with the James Fletcher statue above the “concrete steps leading to the edge of the continent” are reflective of the Newcastle landscape and its own visible links to the past. The James Fletcher Hospital site is described as holding historical trauma which has “seeped into every stone”, while the newspaper building is linked to elements of the “subterranean” and “the underworld” before it is razed and reveals the depths of its contamination, or at least Jean’s perception of it, in the earth below. <o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Clementine Ford says repeatedly “it’s okay to be angry” – in fact she dedicates a whole chapter of <i style="line-height: 1;">Fight Like A Girl</i>to the subject (264-281) and her rage is never far from the surface throughout the book. It’s good advice which she clearly lives by, but how much rage can we individually shoulder, when it is so draining to be perpetually angry? If it is indeed only the second stage of grief – after denial, and before bargaining, depression and acceptance – then of course anger is valid and necessary but I question how long it can be maintained. In the past 25 years I have covered all five stages of the grieving process and it still enrages me to revisit the sites, both physical and spatial, of my trauma. But that anger and the accompanying grief continue to take something away from us, in the form of energy, and at some point we must dismantle the monuments that perpetuate our rage. <o:p></o:p></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 1;">In the recent, often angry debate over our own monuments to Captain Cook, some said we should leave them unchanged as a reminder of the past - even one that has been altered by the wisdom of ensuing centuries. Others thought an extra plaque, an edit of history, would suffice. I suppose it depends how visible you want your version of the story to be. I chose to document autobiographical events through the character of Jean because I felt more comfortable as the external creator of this story rather than the internalized, powerless victim trapped within it.</span>I have made a conscious decision to play with a character outside of myself in order to narrate the autobiographical events of my life. While I can cross the bridge of memory into the past, emotionally and spatially my 19-year-old self no longer exists. So Jean is a creation, or re-creation, of me. As fantasy author Ursula le Guin writes: “By ‘imagination,’ then I personally mean the free play of the mind . . . I mean recreation, re-creation, the combination of what is known into what is new” (Sutherland). <span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 1;">Jean gave me the ability to craft a story rather than simply document the past. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 1;">Monuments can be comforting, confronting and cautionary. They are weighted with our history and our rage and can be debilitating when carried long distances. In the process of writing my own trauma and traversing the spaces between past and present, truth and fiction, I have come to realise that while we may need to construct monuments to our trauma, it is equally important to deconstruct them. We do not need stony-faced men to look down on us from their high (or low) points in history, where they can overlook everything including human suffering. We need to dismantle them with our own hands and take their place on the pedestal as a mark of who we are and what we have endured. It is important to recognise </span>our painful past and the roles of history, place and memory in the perpetuation of trauma. <span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 1;">By removing the stone emblems, brick walls and concrete basements of that trauma we can become our own monuments, no longer weighted markers of a dark past and no longer buried, but sites of freedom and beacons for the future. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p><span style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"><br clear="all" style="break-before: page;" /></font></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><o:p style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b style="line-height: 1;"><u style="line-height: 1;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Bibliography<o:p></o:p></font></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Demo, Anna Teresa and Vivian, Bradford. “Introduction.” <i style="line-height: 1;">Rhetoric, Remembrance and Visual Form: Sighting Memory</i>, edited by Anna Teresa Demo and Bradford Vivian, Routledge, 2012, pp1-12.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Ford, Clementine. <i style="line-height: 1;">Fight Like A Girl</i>. Allen and Unwin, 2016.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Grant, Stan. “Stan Grant: It is a ‘damaging myth’ that Captain Cook discovered Australia.” <i style="line-height: 1;">ABC</i><i style="line-height: 1;">News</i>. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-23/stan-grant:-damaging-myth-captain-cook-discovered-australia/8833536. Accessed 29 September 2017.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Jackson, Amanda and Ellis, Ralph. “Seven arrested in toppling of Confederate statue in North Carolina.” <i style="line-height: 1;">CNN,</i>http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/confederate-statue-pulled-down-north-carolina-trnd/index.html<span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: #0563c1; line-height: 1; text-decoration: underline;">. Accessed 29 September 2017.</span><u style="line-height: 1;"><o:p></o:p></u></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Pujol, Ernesto. “Inherited and New Memories.” <i style="line-height: 1;">Rhetoric, Remembrance and Visual Form: Sighting Memory</i>, edited by Anna Teresa Demo and Bradford Vivian, Routledge, 2012, pp180-188.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Ruohonen, Johanna. “Silenced Memories: Forgetting war in Finnish public paintings.” <i style="line-height: 1;">Rhetoric, Remembrance and Visual Form: Sighting Memory</i>, edited by Anna Teresa Demo and Bradford Vivian, Routledge, 2012, pp209-227.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Sala, Michael. <i style="line-height: 1;">The Last Thread</i>. Affirm Press, 2012.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;"></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; line-height: 29.333335876464844px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2">Shakespeare, William. “Twelfth Night.” <i>The Complete Oxford Shakespeare, Volume II, Comedies</i>. Oxford University Press, 1987.</font><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Sutherland, Natalie. “The Fiction in Autobiography: Fantasy, Narrative and the Discovery of Truth.” <i style="line-height: 1;">Perilous Adventures</i>10.02. http://perilousadventures.net/1002/sutherland.html. Accessed October 28, 2017.<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><font size="2" style="line-height: 1;">Szubanski, Magda. <i style="line-height: 1;">Reckoning</i>. Text Publishing, 2015.</font><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div>
</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-52826319704977941502018-09-21T18:36:00.001+10:002018-09-21T19:33:13.207+10:00volume one<br /><br /><br /> <a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8S7zwe6C2Js/W6Su7_p5RTI/AAAAAAAAAYs/TqDXI1NJO88s-1JU8mSsj9eOvcjeVyS_wCLcBGAs/s1600/Bumz%252BuGRStSGBc%252BZU77i0Q.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8S7zwe6C2Js/W6Su7_p5RTI/AAAAAAAAAYs/TqDXI1NJO88s-1JU8mSsj9eOvcjeVyS_wCLcBGAs/s320/Bumz%252BuGRStSGBc%252BZU77i0Q.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3055679717717628232"></a><br /><br />I remember those beach towels, the ones you are lying on. Dad’s is horizontal stripes, bright colours alternating with black. Yours is twice the size of his, a beach ‘blanket’, I think you used to call it. I remember you wrapping it around me when I came out from swimming at the beach, and it would be dragging on the ground. You would tuck it in, or maybe it was Dad, and then I couldn’t move my arms or my legs. I was stuck like a sandy towelling skittle, but of course I didn’t mind. It’s still one of my favourite feelings, to be wrapped up in a warm towel like that. <br /><br /> I think this photo was taken on a trip to Greenmount, in Surfers Paradise. I can’t even imagine how beautiful it would have been then, in the late 1960s before the developers rolled in and cast shadows over the sand. In this photo, it’s so white it almost looks like snow. There are three of you in the picture. Your towels are spaced evenly apart so you have colonised a section of beach that would be unheard of these days, at least in the summer when there’s barely more than a foot’s width between the beach umbrellas on any decent stretch of sand. There’s nobody else in the photograph, not even a shadow, and the white glare of the sand surrounds the three of you like a halo. Like you’re the only people on the face of the earth. The man sitting on the left was always known to me as ‘Uncle Gadge’ and I never asked why. When the knowledge was considered somehow necessary, I found out his real name was Gary. I didn’t think it suited him.<br /><br /> There are lots of photos of this trip you and Dad made with Gadge and his wife Doreen. She was obviously the photographer, though you all had a turn because this page of the photo album has four frames with exactly the same set-up, only different people. I can imagine you all taking turns with the camera, maybe a Box Brownie or something a bit more modern. There’s no group shot of the four of you but there you all are on one page. I just have to imagine the four of you sitting there together. The little square photographs are exactly what the Instagram generation tries to recreate - white borders and super-saturated colour with a yellowed veneer of age. There is #nofilter here, just five decades under self-adhesive film. On the facing page of the album, there are more shots of you all at a wooden table that’s covered in empty beer bottles. You are all laughing. <br /><br />I remember Gadge was always making people laugh, but now I’m not sure if that’s from experience or from my memories of looking at these photos. My favourite when I was a kid is the one of him with a flash bulb from a camera stuck in his belly button. I don’t remember seeing him that much when I was growing up, even though they didn’t live that far away. He and Doreen were my godparents, which explains how close you were to them in 1972 when I was born. Because I have children of my own now, I can see how that would have changed when my sister and I came along. I can see how life and a mortgage and babies and a job can take over from drinking beer around a kitchen table in Greenmount. But I am glad you had those times. <br /><br /> Your hair is peroxide blonde, almost as white as the sand, and I remember you telling me a story about jumping into a super-chlorinated pool and losing your bleached hair in handfuls. You had to have it cut short, which I think makes you look like a model. Maybe it’s also the oversized sunglasses, or the way you’re lying on your beach blanket, in your glamorous bikini, not a care in the world. Dad is in his natural element, leaning back on one elbow and smiling at the camera. His legs are stretched out past the edge of the towel, feet crossed and covered in sand, and he looks as though he’s been lying there for the better part of a lifetime. Maybe just the best part. <br /><br /> You live near a beach like this now, you and Dad. You both seem to be happiest when you are near the water, and you have passed that on to my sister and I. Your grandchildren have all known the joy of sitting on the sand at the water’s edge with you, building sandcastles, or holding your hand and jumping over and into the waves. So much has changed since this photograph was taken, yet so much is still exactly the same.<br /><br />This golden life you had, newly married and before children, glows back at me from the pages of a discoloured photo album. It is one fleeting moment, captured like a bug in a drop of amber. I turn it over in my hand and hold it up to the light, looking for things that aren’t there. But it is only one scene in one chapter, the first in this album of stories. There will be daughters born, first days of school, a sea change, a cancer diagnosis and a heartwarming recovery before the pages run out. But it’s only volume one, and life is lived in many volumes. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-85115088626623137932018-08-24T18:15:00.002+10:002018-08-24T18:15:50.715+10:00It seems I have forgotten my biro<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I’m no Malcolm Turnbull but it’s been a fucking WEEK. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On Wednesday I was gallery sitting for an exhibition that, coincidentally, my work also won. I entered a short story cycle I had written, as the call for entries sought work from all disciplines at the University of Newcastle. And I fucking WON. First prize. I am no longer prepared to apologise for that, even though it seems few in the art world agreed with the decision and even fewer in the writing world see it as a proper literary achievement. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So there I was, gallery sitting, when a middle-aged white man approached the counter and asked me what I had entered. Clearly he knew that anyone with work in the exhibition also had to volunteer their time to gallery sit for at least a few hours. I could have said “Oh, I won. My work is in the corner of the gallery.” Instead, ever apologetic, I just told him where he could find it. But it seemed he had already seen all the works, because he immediately retorted: “Didn’t grab me.” Because I was so clearly waiting for his opinion on this. “It grabbed the judges,” said I, to which he looked surprised and asked how much the prize was worth. Like it was any of his filthy fucking business. But I told him. He seemed impressed with the amount, but not with the fact that I had won it. He went into the gallery and I went back to the counter, where he approached me about five minutes later and proceeded to ask what the point of my work was, with its tiny text that you had to get up close to read (he obviously hadn’t done this, because he hadn’t been gone long enough. He also confessed as much, insinuating he couldn’t really be bothered as it wasn’t a “visual” work). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So there I was, volunteering my time to work in a gallery, proud of my achievement not only in writing the work but also in being awarded first prize by two separate judges of sound mind, justifying myself to a middle-aged white man. Again. And again. I told him the challenge was to invest the time to read the work and then perhaps you would be rewarded with an emotional response, just as you might be with a visual work of art. I might as well have been reading the phone book. He didn’t see the point, though I think I won the argument because he gave up and congratulated me before thankfully leaving the building. But he didn’t read my work and he probably still thinks it doesn’t deserve to even be hanging in a student art prize, let alone win it. He’s entitled to that opinion, of course. But why of all days did he have to choose this Wednesday between 1pm and 5pm to come in to the gallery and throw it at me? These fucking tests are doing my head in.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, I went to a university lecture titled Perspectives on Film, Media and Culture. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I had spent the past 36 hours closely (some might say a bit obsessively) following the political clusterfuck unfolding in Canberra via the Twitter feeds of the country’s best journalists as well as some on-point social commentators. I was also following more traditional coverage on ABC News 24 both on radio and television. I spent 20 years being a journalist and I boycott all news except political drama because I can’t get enough of that. In between marvelling at the professionalism of ABC journos who had been dissecting the drama for three straight days, I also read no less than five scholarly articles about the creative industries. Because they were assigned to be read for today’s lecture. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There were lots of things discussed in the lecture, probably lots of valid things and even interesting things, but I don’t remember many of them. What I do remember is the twenty-something (female) lecturer telling the class that women over the age of 40 don’t understand social media. They don’t understand how to use it or how it works. They think it works like life and it doesn’t, apparently. I am 45 years old and I wanted to tell her IT’S NOT FUCKING ROCKET SCIENCE. Instead I politely suggested that we don’t CONFUSE it with life, which is a different thing entirely. She tried to apologise, said she didn’t mean me obviously, not all women over 40 etcetera etcetera. Don’t fucking test me, I wanted to say. But I felt like I had already sat the test, and already failed it.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">AND I AM TIRED OF YOUR FUCKING TESTS.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-84284614845789239402016-11-24T12:51:00.000+11:002016-11-24T12:51:05.119+11:00writing myself out of this messI'm not much of a people person, I suppose most people who know me would say. It isn't that I don't enjoy company, even crave it sometimes, it's just that good company seems to be getting harder to find. Everyone is so busy doing whatever it is that keeps them going. I am not burdened by busy-ness, as it happens, but I am doubly burdened by the guilt associated with that and some days I can't keep going no matter how hard I try.<br />
I spend way too much time looking at my newsfeed and seeing a relentless churning mass of things that make me sad, interspersed with the occasional cat video or Dalai Lama quote that makes me smile. I know, and please don't interrupt me with advice because fuck knows that's the other thing my newsfeed is brimful of, that I should put my phone away and go outside. On most days I do. On most days I try to maintain some perspective. I try to focus on all the amazing good in my little part of the world. But some days that little part is bounded on four sides by a fence and surrounded by people who couldn't care less.<br />
I have never felt more in need of a tribe, and never felt that tribe so far away. I know where they are and it is not here. If I go in search of them I will have to take everyone I love, but my greatest fear is that I will have to take myself too.<br />
I was hoping a couple of weeks ago to see Mother Moon and get some answers from her. Turns out she's not a superwoman either, and the clouds were more than a match for her that day. I thought how good it would be, given the election of a moron and the passing of a genius, to have a gathering of people singing, playing music, embracing nature and each other's company and the immense power of the moon. She's seen this shit a million times and she's all over it. <br />
All I really feel capable of doing at the moment is writing. If I could write myself and everyone else a new world that's totally what I would do. It turns out I can't. I just write little bits and pieces of happiness here and there and maybe one day I will have a nice word quilt to throw over our shoulders to keep us warm.<br />
I wrote this today. I really hope you like it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria;">AT the age of five years, Esmeralda began to collect things.
Having no grasp of time’s relentless nature or the span of decades that awaited
her, she started keeping little traces of her life in a lidded porcelain box
her grandmother had given her. The ballerina painted on the lid was on her
tiptoes, arms outstretched in front of her as though to carry all the treasures
Esmeralda bestowed into the little box. Soon the treasures – a broken but still
spectacular hair clip, two miraculous four-leafed clovers her sister had found,
a piece of broken pottery with a blue flower in one corner, several glass beads
saved from a broken necklace and a magnificently whole macadamia nut – began to
outgrow the ballerina’s box. Despite having just celebrated her sixth birthday,
Esmeralda needed a new vessel for her life’s most important articles. Having
explored the overflowing plasticware drawer in the kitchen – plenty of boxes
but no lids – and searched her sister’s bedroom and her own, Esmeralda could
find no vessel as pretty as the ballerina’s box. She resolved to store future
treasures in a properly unassuming shoebox, so as to render snooping sisters
unaware of the bounty inside. An added bonus was that the ballerina’s box
fitted inside the shoebox too, as Esmeralda would have hated to part her treasures
from their steadfast, pointy-toed guardian. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria;">In keeping with the nature of things, this first shoebox
spawned a multitude. Soon a whole shelf of Esmeralda’s wardrobe had to be
cleared to contain all the shoeboxes and all the treasure. Her mother’s
protests to dispose of some of this priceless collection were greeted with
momentary disbelief followed by outright indignation. Still, as Esmeralda
passed her seventh, eighth and ninth birthdays, her collecting of treasures began
to slow down. When she reached the milestone of one decade on earth, there were
fewer and fewer things to treasure – at least things that could fit inside a
shoebox. If she counted her cat Zydeco, her threadbare teddy, her Mum and Dad,
her rainbow high-tops, raspberry ice blocks and the jacaranda tree in her
backyard, there was more treasure than could ever be contained in a vessel
smaller than Esmeralda’s enormous heart. She did not stop treasuring the little
things, she only stopped trying to make them her own.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-8235264249591788512016-09-29T12:14:00.000+10:002016-10-30T21:51:56.832+11:00The first Freya<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When I was about 15 there was an Australian film I saw, I
can’t even remember where or with whom. It was called The Year My Voice Broke. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There was a girl in this film and her name was Freya. I had
never heard the name before but it stayed with me for many years, and I
remembered this Freya as being a bit wild and almost otherworldly. I remembered
her cotton dresses and her wanderings around the barren but beautiful landscape
in which the film was set. My second child was born 18 years after the film was
released, and she was never going to have any other name but Freya.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the time between seeing my first Freya and holding my
very own, I had learned more about the name – the Norse goddess of love and
beauty, who rode in a chariot drawn by two cats, whose day was Friday (the day
my Freya was born) and whose animals were cats and stallions. I did not watch
The Year My Voice Broke again, although I found it on DVD at a discount store a
couple of years ago and bought it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Last night I decided on a whim to finally watch it again,
this time with my husband who had never seen it before. I watched my first
Freya with eyes almost 20 years older and saw what it must have been that drew
me to her, although I couldn’t honestly recall most of the storyline. I saw her
wildness, her connection to spirit, her barely contained beauty and her wild
yellow hair that matched the hills around her home town.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I had not expected the story to be one of birth and loss, of
ghosts and the heavy, unavoidable burden of history. As a 15-year-old I had not
seen any of these things, or at least had not found them memorable. How lovely
it was to know that even though my life now carries so much more and sometimes
weighs so heavily, that my first Freya has not changed at all. She is still
wandering the windswept hills, wearing her cotton dresses and windswept hair,
being beautiful and wild.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-36275340463440716422016-08-02T21:07:00.000+10:002016-08-02T21:21:05.204+10:00In the sun born over and over ...There was a moment last Sunday that was notable for lots of reasons. It was on a long stretch of beach, which makes it memorable for setting alone, and it involved a family outing and a challenging but visually and physiologically rewarding walk up a very steep hill. As we walked back along the beach under an enormous blue sky, I glanced behind me for the fifteenth time to make sure Rosa was following, prone as she is to pausing and picking up shells or seaweed or spinning in circles or just stopping to plunge her hands deep into the sand because it's there. She wasn't behind me. She wasn't in front of me. She wasn't beside me either, at least not on the ocean side, and I suppose I had that split second of panic where I thought my child had vanished into thin air, before I looked to my other side and about five metres into the distance to see she had climbed the metre-high ledge of sand and was running along the ridge with pure abandon. I walked along beside her but kept my distance, and although we were both moving I felt completely fixed on her and her lightning-bolt, pure-hearted spirit. I'm almost ashamed to admit my brief moment of regret at not having brought my phone to capture this image of her, but it occurred to me then that it would be with me forever anyway, and I resolved to try something I haven't done before. I wanted to see if I could <i>write </i>this image, to conjure it using only words, and create an image just as real as any Instagram post. In this age where everything has to be an image or a soundbite to command attention, I wanted to see if I could make something with words.<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: x-small; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new"; text-indent: 36pt;">She is running along
the very top of the ridge, as though the thin line where the sand meets the vaulted
blue sky is an extension of her bare feet. She seems to run without thought or
effort, although her sleeves are bunched up above her elbows, her skirt long
since discarded and her tights rolled just under her knees, as if to prove her
protests at having to wear too many clothes on this sunny winter’s day. Her
hair was pulled into a bun this morning but many hours of adventure have almost
brought it undone. Rebellious strands, like the thickets of wheat-like, waving seagrass
along the ridge line beneath her feet, catch the early afternoon sun and are
rendered golden. Her focused, smiling face is radiant too, a reflection of pure
joy and a primal urge to move, to run, to be free. I am reminded of words I
once quoted when she was a toddler, and somehow they are even more perfect now
than they were then:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new"; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new"; text-indent: 36pt;">“Under
the new-made clouds and happy as the day was long,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new"; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: xx-normal;"> In
the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways.”</span></span><span style="font-family: "courier new"; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: xx-normal;"> </span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new"; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: xx-normal;">(Dylan Thomas, <i>F</i></span></span><i style="text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new";"><span style="font-size: xx-normal;">ern
Hill) </span></span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-10115203954570257752016-04-05T13:42:00.000+10:002016-04-05T13:43:12.633+10:00Dweller on the threshold<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br />
Last weekend a Writers
Festival came to town and filled the streets of Newcastle, along with my
calendar. I was one of many volunteers on two of the three days, as well as a
finalist in the festival’s inaugural Microlit competition for short fiction
(200 words or less).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br />
The first session I saw while volunteering was a meeting of two Newcastles –
old and new, steel and sky, blue collar and white. John Lewer spoke about his
new book, <i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Not Charted On
Ordinary Maps</span></i>, which
documents the period between the announcement of BHP’s steelworks
closure and the actual day the gates closed for the final time. It was
two-and-a-half years, and for the 5000 mostly male workers must have been a
time of great pain and uncertainty, despite the overall hope that many in
Newcastle, including myself, held for a future unfettered by the dirty great
industry that had been its making.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br />
The room was full of men who
had clearly seen all those things – the making of an industry, the pain of its
loss. Lewer recounted the incredible figures around that two-and-a-half year
period – the productivity gains, the almost negligible absenteeism. Back then
these men had something to prove, and though it ultimately fell on deaf ears, I
don’t think it was lost on a single person gathered at City Hall last Friday. I
doubt whether most of those gathered had ever been to a Writers Festival,
though of course I could be wrong. It seemed they were there seeking answers of
some kind, these middle-aged and elderly men who carried with them a life of
hard work and resignation. I think I winced when Lewer quoted from his book the
cruel observation that, when the death knell finally sounded for BHP’s
Newcastle steelworks, the unions and workers alike were instrumental “in their
own demise”. The words could not have been easy for these once-strong men to
hear, even 17 years later. They, like the city, are connected far beyond
knock-off time to a place beyond the physical, to a comradeship that helped
them rise above the politics and brutal conditions they endured for most of
their working lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
The title of Lewer’s book comes from a passage in W.A. Metcalfe’s
academic article ‘Mud and Steel: The Imagination of Newcastle’ and when Lewer
read out the passage I was hanging on every word:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Not just space, then, nor just bricks and
mortar, Newcastle is rallying calls, pledges of loyalty, moral terrors … the
analyst of Newcastle must explore memories, dreams and imaginings not charted
on ordinary maps.’</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br />
It reminded me of a poem I wrote last year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Novocastration</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
I recognise this place.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I’d know that stifled optimism
anywhere.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">A place full of heart,</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">If you believe the paper.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">But all your major arteries are empty.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Beards have replaced the boilermakers</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And there are different tracks,</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">All going nowhere.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Cafes have cropped up</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Where corned beef used to be the rage</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And you don’t do smoko now,</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Just coffee to go or kerbside
espresso.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">You’re going places.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Always have been.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Your ship’ll come in,</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">But then it’s gone by dawn</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Down the old Coal River</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And out to new horizons where I can’t
see</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And you’ll never be.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">- Jodi
Vial</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
By Saturday I was in a much more
optimistic mood. The sun was shining, the streets were buzzing, and I was
standing outside the Civic Playhouse with my volunteers' clipboard smiling and
saying hello to Drusilla Modjeska, one of many wonderful authors who visited
the city for the festival. I snuck in later to see part of her session, in
which she discussed her writing life, and caught an anecdote that will stay
with me for a long time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
Modjeska related the story of taking some visiting Papua New
Guinean women to a large Australian shopping centre so that they might buy some
clothing and souvenirs to take back home. She recalled seeing the matriarch of
the group, “one of the most powerful women I have ever known, and I have known
some very powerful women”, suddenly lose all her strength and begin to look
panicked. When Modjeska asked the woman what was wrong, her reply came from
generations of connection we can only imagine, having begun to lose our grip on
it some time ago. “Where is your ground?” the woman pleaded. “Where is your
ground?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
That night I was back in City Hall for a
discussion on microfiction and the screening of all four finalists in the
festival’s Microlit competition. I was disappointed not to win, just a little,
but loved hearing the other works and my own, voiced by professional actors and
with audiovisual enhancement by Melbourne writer and artist Richard Holt. I
can’t provide you with the full package here, but following is the piece for
which I was shortlisted. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br />
I know how it feels to be
seeking ground, but with this work and the continual work of writing and
learning, I believe I have found mine and hope it will never be lost to me
again.<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Threshold</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">There are two bare feet below
her on the weathered boards. She is unsure if they belong to her or someone
else. Either way they anchor her as her body tilts and rolls through another
wave of pain and she comes out gasping with exhaustion and relief. The boards
breathe along with her, with the spirit of the women who came before her, who birthed
and were born in this house, held above the earth by this floor and beneath the
sky by this roof but no less a part of them both. She lifts her head to take a
great belly full of air before the next wave and she sees a small bird, a
swallow, rendered in plaster but moving, flying, as surely as if it were
feathers and bone. The swallow’s wings lift her spirit but her body is still
anchored to the dusty floor and filled with pain and purpose. She braces
against the nearest door, claws at the timber as though she might bring the
whole place down. Her baby is at the threshold of the earth and she is reborn
with him, into a motherhood and sisterhood from which she will never
return. </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> Jodi Vial 2015</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
</span><br />
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">It
seems we are all trapped, one way or another. Either trapped in circumstances
we did not foresee or trapped in those we intentionally created for ourselves.
And there we are. The decision is whether to struggle or to give in, which
seems an immense decision on the face of it but ultimately neither one matters
in the end. Either way you are still trapped, and even if you manage to get
free there will only be another trap attached to freedom. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">Some would say that
not having to go to work would be the ultimate freedom. Some would delight, if
only they could, in not having to be anywhere or do anything all day. No places
to go, no people to see. The enormous freedom. Yet I know that with that kind
of freedom comes complete uncertainty. Like letting a toddler do whatever they want
to do without any intervention. At first it’s fun but then they get hungry, or
tired, or both, and without an adult to feed them or put them to bed a toddler
is lost. Confused. Panic-stricken. Their freedom is their prison. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">So
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self-control has momentarily left the building, along with my self-belief and
self-preservation. I’m sure they’ll be back. They’ve just ducked out for some
fresh air and adult conversation. You tend to miss these things when you don’t
get out much.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s the
walking I miss. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The feeling
of bare earth </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">on the soles
of my feet, the freedom</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">to move without waiting. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The clear
soundless notion of solitude.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am worn by these days, worn and tired </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and sinking</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">below the surface. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I crave air
that is mine alone, </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">just enough
to fill my lungs </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and heart
again. Just enough </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">to open up a
path within me </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">where my feet
can go wherever they choose.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-87983917381340529192015-12-19T21:33:00.000+11:002015-12-19T21:33:02.183+11:00songlinesThere is little not to love about a mixtape, especially a well thought-out, emotionally invested one. I think the days of having to press record and play on your trusty tape player made them even more of a gift, but perhaps I'm just being nostalgic. One of my uni assignments this semester was to make a mixtape with words rather than music, to recall songs heard during pivotal life moments and how they made me feel. So I pressed rewind and this is what happened.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Homeward Bound, Simon & Garfunkel</span></b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I am 21 years old and two weeks
into an indefinite stay in England when I find myself on a bus bound for the
quaintly named Cotswolds. The grey of the sky and surrounding countryside has
begun seeping into my bones. In my Sony Walkman I have a cassette, and Simon
& Garfunkel are serenading me, in their strange and mournful way, as the
bus window frames an endlessly rolling film and the soundtrack plays on in my
head. I am heading to a job interview that might keep me here in England, and
the thought of that is both slightly exciting and thoroughly depressing at the
same time. The job is – again quaintly named – Mother’s Help, which if it were
anywhere but the Cotswolds would have me thinking about Mick Jagger and running
for the shelter of her Mother’s Little Helper, but I’m not in central London
any more.</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i></div>
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m
sittin’ in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination. On a tour of
one-night stands, my suitcase and guitar in hand, and every stop is neatly
planned for a poet and a one-man band. Homeward bound, I wish I was homeward
bound. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This music was made for these
lonely grey fields, made for this bus ride to God knows where, this exact
moment in my life when, not for the last time, things could seriously go either
way. But the only way I really want to go is home.</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Don’t Stand So Close to the Window, Paul Kelly</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The rain has left rivers of
salt on the outside of my bedroom window, but I am one storey up and would be
risking death to regain my view. Ocean glimpses are nice, but they don’t mean
that much to me.</span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s my first flat – solid
brick, Art Deco, a block of four two streets from the beach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spinster pad doesn’t have quite the same ring
as the male equivalent, but that’s what it is. On summer afternoons I open all
the windows and let the sea in. Then I try not to drown. I turn up Paul Kelly
on my new stereo and forget that I have to work tomorrow. The window sills are
wide enough to sit on and I usually do.</span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Sometimes I imagine falling
from here, leaning too far out the open window while I wait for the sound of
his car. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oh my love, how we fell. What
we’ve done now we never can tell.</i></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">From where I am sitting I
cannot see the bars. </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Flame Trees, Sarah Blasko</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m a million miles from a Blue
Light Disco and Barnesy’s version of this song when I first hear Sarah Blasko spinning
it from bogan anthem into poetry. I am days away from redundancy after holding
a job I neither love nor hate for the past twenty years, and the heartache is
rolling in and out like coal ships on a far too familiar horizon. This town and
I have history, but who’s to say it’s not just sentimental bullshit? She sings
these words like they’ve never been screamed by a hundred drunken bodies in a
hundred beer-soaked back bars, and when she pitches that line: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Do you remember, nothing stopped us on the
field, in our day?</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am lost to an
emotion with unknown origins. No longer young, no longer wanted on the factory
floor, and wondering who will go and who will stay. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Which one of us can tell the biggest lies?</i></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Here If You Want, The Waifs</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She’s alone on the stage,
single spotlight, sweaty from a full set with the band, but there is something
else she needs to say and she’s saying it to me. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I could hazard a guess, but I’ll never know, why you put these walls up
I can’t get through. It’s as though you want to be lonely and blue. </i>There
is just her voice in a cavernous theatre but it finds me. Over and over again
it finds me. It pierces through the weight on my chest, through the cage that
is my ribs, and sets the leaden bird free.</span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Unwelcome Guest, Billy Bragg and Wilco</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This song is my constant
companion on the late and lonely drive back along the freeway from Sydney to
Newcastle. I have babies in bed but I skulk through the dark mist and midnight
like a robber on horseback. I don’t have a shiny black Bess, like Billy does,
but a silver hatchback to carry me home from a night’s work. I’ve been lured by
the big guns, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Financial Review</i>,
to do some casual work after my longest break from journalism in a decade. Like
Billy’s highwayman, I’m doing it for the money and my conscience chooses the
midnight run home to get the better of me.</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
don’t know good horse, as we trot in this dark here, if robbing the rich is for
worse or for best. They take it by stealing, and lying and gambling, and I take
it my way, my shiny black Bess. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br clear="all" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span></i>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-74675883098044077242015-12-18T21:06:00.001+11:002015-12-18T21:19:02.598+11:00write onThere’s an entry in one of my schoolgirl journals, circa 1986, that proclaims the great life decision I made after watching The World According To Garp. I wanted to be a writer, my 14-year-old self said. A real writer. I have done many things since that particular journal entry, but I have never wavered from that desire. Writing is the only thing I do without second-guessing myself, without feeling like maybe I’m in the wrong place and I should give up before somebody figures that out. I do it because I love it, because it exorcises my demons and exercises my mind, which has been known to turn upon itself if it doesn’t get its daily run around the block. This year I’ve been studying writing – my own and others – and I have been compelled to sit down and write when otherwise I might have put it off. It has been wonderful. It has reminded me of my teenage dream to be a real writer, and pushed me to submit some of my stories to places where I hope they might be appreciated. One of those places was the sublime <a href="http://womankindmag.com/">womankind</a> magazine, and although they will not be publishing the five-day meditation journal I wrote as part of their competition, I enjoyed the process of writing it and hope you might enjoy reading it. In the past few weeks I am becoming accustomed to things not turning out as planned. My first instinct is to blame myself for being less than an ideal person, or candidate, or writer. But first instincts aren’t always accurate, and so I have decided to try focusing on the many wonderful things I do have in my life, rather than the few things I don’t. If you are casting your eyes over these words, then thankyou. You are one of the pluses.<br />
<br />
Monday, November 22<br />
At a little round table with two seats, on the edge of a footpath at the edge of a busy city, my friend and I are catching up on an absence of a few months. In the fabric that is 30 years of friendship, these dropped stitches are easily caught. Our families, our newest discoveries, our latest endeavours are worked into an effortless conversation that comes from having known one another for three-quarters of our lives. We pick up our common threads and weave them into a beautiful two hours of easy and joyful companionship, a meditation on the changing nature of life and the everlasting nature of friendship that fills me with gratitude.<br />
<br />
<br />
Tuesday, November 23<br />
The afternoon shade has fallen on our backyard trampoline and my five-year-old daughter is trying out some tricks for me. “Watch me Mummy”, she says over and over until it finally sinks in, into my brain which is beginning to rewire itself for baths and dinner and bedtime. So I stop myself and I watch. Really watch. I see her small but strong legs send her flying into the air, see her arms hold her there for a split second before she lands again. She asks me to count how many bounces .. 22, 23, 24 .. and there is nothing else but to watch. Watch me Mummy.<br />
<br />
Wednesday, November 24<br />
It is the kind of day that signals its intentions not long after dawn, when the air should be fresh and welcoming but instead is a hangover from the unbearable heat of the day before. There will be no respite today, the sluggish morning seems to say. And while I curse the broken air-conditioning in my car, as well as my pitiful reliance on it, I need only wait a few hours to receive my blessing. As I leave an evening meeting for the short drive home under a celestial full moon and a sky full of stars, it is not artificially chilled air that sustains me but the still, cool evening air blowing in through the open windows.<br />
<br />
Thursday, November 25<br />
The warmth of the sun is held in the sheets as I take them down from the clothesline, folding them roughly as a matter of course even though I know they are destined to return to the beds they came from. There is merciful shade over this part of the backyard now, and having gathered my washing I join our six hens in their own afternoon gathering place, though my mood and movement are much slower than theirs. I sit on the cool grass just for a moment to watch them, their eyes intent on every patch of dirt or inch of lawn they happen to be hovering over. I envy them their focus, their innate but somehow effortless work ethic, their simple but admirable life. Watching them makes me feel peaceful, and I can’t help but smile.<br />
<br />
Friday, November 26<br />
The meditative act of writing has been with me since I was young, although I have only recently begun to recognise it as such. What began in me as a compulsion and was received by many as a talent has now become so much more. It is a daily practice, a revered process that may not always produce great quantities or uniform quality but is nonetheless a priceless gift to myself and my sense of connection. I am grateful for what it teaches me and expands in me every day, just as I am grateful for the inspiration that comes from reading the words of others.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-34300115023373204562014-12-28T14:27:00.000+11:002014-12-28T14:29:09.744+11:00take a load for free<br />
I’m a bit past letters to Santa, and it’s not like anybody really asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, at least not in the way that would imply I might actually get it.<br />
<br />
But now, pressure off, reindeers long since disappeared over the horizon, I feel I can honestly tell you. What I really, desperately want, and have wanted for the best part of the year, is not to be given anything. It is to have something, lots of things, taken away. I think my ideal Christmas would not have involved receiving of any kind, just lots of people coming to my house and taking stuff. For nothing. No eBay or Gumtree transactions involved, no money changing hands. Just for Christ’s sake come and take this shit I don’t want or need. It is ballast. The dinner sets that have never, in their entire existence, known the sensation of food. The clothes I haven’t worn since the 90s. The stupid, dusty, unopened, unappreciated books (there are beautiful books that are worth their weight in gold, and then there are pointless bricks of paper that many trees died needlessly for). Take them. I beg of you.<br />
<br />
In my wildest dreams I imagine a gigantic skip bin placed in my driveway, where I can throw all the ephemera that haunts me and taunts me and weighs me down. I might even open the windows in the lounge room, the ones with no flyscreens, and fling worthless objects in the direction of the skip bin in hopes they will reach their intended destination. Scratched, chipped plates might even shatter in a highly dramatic fashion on the footpath.<br />
<br />
I don’t feel sad about any of this, in fact I’m having a hard time summoning any sentimental feelings at all. I just feel a bit angry, if anything, that my belongings have become such a counterweight to true happiness. That I allowed myself to accumulate so much shit. That I fell into the trap of wanting a bigger house, thinking that would buy me more space, more light, more room to breathe, when in fact all I did was fill it with stuff that slowly but surely robbed me of all those things.<br />
<br />
I’ve been fighting the urge all year to just up stumps and go somewhere else. Take the husband, of course, the kids, the dog, one car, a few bags. But no baggage. No mortgage. No endless pursuit of something that’s just not there. But I dare not breathe a word of it. It’s such a big picture that it might just swallow me whole. What I can do is make a plan, smash some plates, offload some ballast. And hire a skip bin.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-77071996686613176062014-12-11T21:08:00.002+11:002014-12-11T21:11:58.336+11:00The circle game<i>And the seasons, they go round and round</i><br />
<i>And the painted ponies go up and down.</i><br />
<i>We're captive on the carousel of time.</i><br />
<i>We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came</i><br />
<i>And go round and round and round in the circle game.</i><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
- Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Today was my very last playgroup, after roughly eight years and three daughters. I can barely begin to put into words how that makes me feel sad, and a bit scared, and maybe a tiny bit triumphant.<br />
<br />
I tried really hard not to think about all those things while I sang Dandelion and blew into her hair - "they pick me up in their dimpled hands, and blow my hair away" - and galloped around holding her hand singing My Donkey Has A Bridle - "if ever I should lose him, it wouldn't be for long" - because I could so easily have cried at the thought of doing all these things - things I have done with three beautiful little girls - for the last time.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So instead I tried to think about the cycles, the seasons, the circular nature of life and the fact that time waits for no man, woman or child. Summer becomes Autumn becomes Winter becomes Spring and while we are there to celebrate each of those moments in time, it makes no sense to cling to them. Life goes on.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
So I held my baby's hand, and held myself together, for one last time: "The sun says I glow, the stream says I flow, the breeze says I blow, the wind says I BLOW, the seed says I grow. And we say "I know". </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-20262646478732077282014-10-13T20:55:00.002+11:002014-10-13T20:55:47.114+11:00big loveSometimes you make decisions and the results are instant, whether good or bad. Sometimes they take a while longer to be realised. And then there are times like today, when a decision I made more than 12 years ago came to be so much more than I ever imagined.<br />
I kept all the cards I was sent when I first became a mother. All the celebratory notes, the sweet hand-written words that welcomed me into the exclusive club of parenthood and more importantly, welcomed our baby girl into the world.<br />
I kept them and put them into a display folder, the kind usually reserved for boring business presentations or school projects, but the best thing for the job. They are displayed so that you can see the pretty pink pictures on the front and the beautiful, personal messages inside. I did this for my first daughter and my second, and then my third, because I wanted them to know, in case they ever doubted it, how much of a celebration their lives had brought about. How much they were welcomed, treasured, loved.<br />
I had never shown the girls their folders, mainly because I had thought they would be older before they could grasp the intention behind them. Perhaps they might still come in useful in times of adolescent angst. But tonight Freya was talking about her namesake, the Norse goddess, and how her class is beginning to learn the myths of Freya. I remembered that I had printed out a beautiful illustration of my Freya’s goddess when she was just a few weeks old, and put it in her folder. Naturally she was fascinated, and proceeded to look at and read every card. Elsa wanted to know if she had a folder too, and set about doing the same. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I think her wise 12-year-old eyes saw past the pink baby carriages and the embossed booties into how big her life was to us, even when she was just a tiny dot.<br />
So today I took just a moment to congratulate myself on that decision 12 years ago, on the $2 purchase of a crappy plastic folder that holds so much love and so many promises. Not just for my daughters, but for myself too.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-656529518803387912014-09-06T22:19:00.001+10:002014-09-06T22:20:24.463+10:00Dear Dad<br />
I didn’t get you a Father’s Day present this year. I’m sorry about that, although I don’t think you’ll mind. Rather than buy something you don’t really need, I thought I would give you something I made myself. It always went down well when I was in primary school.<br />
It’s not a hand-made card or a pencil holder, though. It’s just words, because I am best at writing things down and I think you have always seen that in me and helped me to believe it.<br />
You have always been great at the Dad things - building stuff, fixing stuff, giving directions and having a good laugh. But you’re great at the other Dad things too, which are harder to put a name to.<br />
My first, best memory of you is holding onto your arm and you lifting me off the ground as though I weighed nothing. I could barely fit my arms around yours, but I knew then and I know now that they would never let me fall.<br />
The words “Happy Father’s Day” seem a bit hollow to me. A bit hollow and a bit commercial and a lot about somebody else's idea of what a father means. So I have some others to give you and I hope you like them. I love you, and thankyou for everything.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<span id="goog_175745619"></span><span id="goog_175745620"></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-57850918424296234412014-07-06T15:45:00.002+10:002014-07-06T15:56:44.274+10:00mind if i share?<br />
I am alone and the house is quiet, except for the hum of the dishwasher and the occasional clatter of a cat hurling itself at the walls and down the hallway. I’ve been alone all day, although I did manage to leave the house for a few hours. But even though I was surrounded by people, I was still alone.<br />
<br />
This time last week I would have given anything for the ability to be alone, doing nothing, with no noise or distractions or feelings of guilt at not having enough entertainment planned for the kids. Time to myself, to think about what I want to think about, to make plans, to read or write or even sleep in the middle of the day if I wanted to. But on this, my third straight day of such blatant luxury, and for the first time in living memory, I am not so sure that I like being alone any more.<br />
<br />
The girls have been staying with my Mum and Dad a couple of hours away, and while it’s something I sorely needed after a couple of bouts of the flu, it’s never easy to drive away from them knowing it will be days before I see them again. I know they will be having fun and they will be happy, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling rotten that I have to leave them somewhere miles away just so I can get some time to myself.<br />
<br />
Not that I haven’t had a lovely time these past few days with my dearest husband and soul mate. I haven’t cooked a single meal, we’ve done dinner and a movie and just enjoyed the closeness that comes from not having three other people in the house. When we arranged the break, I knew he would have to work all weekend but he’d be home every afternoon and we would have the evenings together. What bliss, I thought, to have two days to myself. What will I do? Where will I go? Cafes? Shopping? Long walks on the beach?<br />
<br />
Day one I went shopping, but it wasn’t as much fun as you’d think. Because the other word in it was ‘grocery’. Good job to get out of the way, but by the time I got home it was midday and after I’d had some lunch (okay, a chocolate chip muffin and a cup of tea) I really couldn’t get motivated to leave the house again. I put on some music and enjoyed the beautiful winter sunshine (and empty clothes line) instead.<br />
<br />
Day two involved a trip to the farmers market for supplies, a hit and run mission to avoid the babies and cute children all rugged up against the cold that played into my mothers’ guilt. I hauled my bags to the car and thought about calling a friend to see if she was up for a visit. Knowing how busy she always is, and how long it’s been since I’ve seen her, I thought twice. I drove to a weekly trash and treasure market that I’ve always enjoyed looking around with the girls, and today was no exception. Lots of trash and a few little treasures, plus a chance meeting with a friend from high school who is just as lovely now, maybe even more lovely given my scarcity of friendships and desperate need for adult conversation.<br />
<br />
I lugged my treasures back to the car and decided to call my busy friend. True to form, she wasn’t home. In fact she is not home almost as often as I am home. Which is all the time. Literally every waking moment. When I am not driving to or from school, which amounts to roughly 25 minutes each weekday and nothing on weekends.<br />
<br />
So here I am. I have had my nap, I have read the Sunday paper, I have even done a load of washing to satisfy myself that I still exist. But despite having wished for this time, time to myself, time alone, I now realise how very alone I am. Maybe not lonely, because that’s a different thing. But sadly and forlornly alone.<br />
<br />
I thought a bit of reading might help. But everywhere I look there are people leading full and interesting lives and feeling the uncontrollable urge to tell everyone about it. The newspapers are full of horrible characters, from the news pages to the social pages, and the online ‘presence’ of anyone with opposable thumbs is doing my head in.<br />
<br />
In the past two years I’ve let lots of things go. Some go easily, others are harder. Hopes of an overseas holiday don’t seem to matter so much until you become an unwilling observer of somebody else’s holiday snaps and realise they are the closest you will ever come to that side of the world (or country). And nobody begrudges a person for having fantastic hair but it does make it all that harder to look into any reflective surface and be reminded that nine months have passed since your last visit to the hairdresser and the grey on your head is starting to match the grey of your face.<br />
<br />
People are everywhere, sharing the minutiae of their lives every single second it seems. They have so much to say, but it doesn’t stop there. There’s all that information that somebody has decreed we the public must know. The newspapers are full of it, churning it out in great meaningless slabs that can really only be discerned from the David Jones and Myer sales ads by the altered font.<br />
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The vast majority of this is information I neither need nor want. My brain is overloaded with other people’s memories of misery and abuse and suffering and the only way to avoid it is to leave the newspaper at the front door in its plastic cocoon. I don’t want to know these people. I want a real conversation with a real person. It seems I want too much. It seems my company is no more appealing to others than it is to me.<br />
<br />
I know I’m feeling sorry for myself. But the one thing I miss about being alone is being able to write. To take all the crazy thoughts that fall over themselves inside my head and get them out. So it is done. I have not walked on any beaches, mainly because Are you kidding? It’s freezing outside! And I have not visited any cafes, mainly because the point of going to a café is to meet somebody else there and enjoy their company. The point of solitude, in contrast, is to be alone. And not just alone surrounded by people. Actually alone. Like I am right this minute, save for a mildly concussed cat, although I am still really wishing I’d had somebody else to sit down with today and just share an hour and a hot chocolate. Unlike filtered Instagram photos of overseas sojourns and blissful firesides, that’s the kind of sharing I miss.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-30979650250593481042014-05-19T21:08:00.001+10:002014-05-19T21:08:26.503+10:00the arrival of oberonA few days after losing Mao, I had a dream that another cat found me. He was a big chocolate-brown bear of a cat, so naturally enough I called him Bear. It may or may not be pertinent that I have a thing about bears, and also a thing about John Irving novels, which also have a thing about bears. But I digress.<br />
<br />
When looking for our next cat, I was not really looking for a cat at all, and not for a Mao either. I was looking for a Bear. When I found the little Tabby/Tonkinese cross on Gumtree I was not sure he looked much like a Bear, but I wasn't sure what name would suit him. Then one morning I flicked open my very dog-eared baby name book and the first word my eyes fell on was Auberon (also spelt Oberon). And the meaning: Gentle bear.<br />
<br />
We picked up our little bundle one recent overcast Sunday, after a long drive to the surprisingly affluent western suburbs of Sydney. And after the long drive home, we introduced our Oberon to HRH Violet and the result was not entirely unexpected. Much hissing and spitting but very little actual contact ensued for the next several hours until they settled on a respectful distance and realised that they in fact had more in common than first thought. By the next evening I had both of them asleep on my lap. At once.<br />
<br />
But Oberon, or Obi as we have taken to calling him (Obi Wan Kenobi may have been mentioned once or twice), is no gentle bear. He is much more like a tiny leopard, all legs-like-steel-springs and wily manouevres on an ever unsuspecting Violet. He can be such a mischievous little boy, much like I imagine any little boy can sometimes be, and while I chastise him for his endless torment of poor Violet, I think both she and I can't help but love him. They will play, then fight, then play some more, then I'll find them curled up together on a chair where they'll sleep for hours. And when all is quiet at the end of another long day, and I fall onto the lounge to savour my thank-god-that's-over cuppa, I will feel a small presence beside me and my little leopard will jump onto my lap and curl up as quiet as a lamb. No bears allowed.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-1166534594412108332014-05-09T20:40:00.000+10:002014-05-09T20:40:00.263+10:00the story of violetI knew we would never replace Mao. How could we? But I was less certain how I would get through the pain of losing him without the benefit of a cat. There is no better cure for heartache.<br />
<br />
After a week, I searched Gumtree through tears for Tonkinese kittens. They were all outside the state or outside our budget, or both. Then finally a compromise: a Tonkinese/tabby cross in Sydney with a pedigree mum and a mischievous glint in his eye. He’d be ready in just over a month. I paid the deposit and said nothing to the girls. When they asked would we ever get another cat, I just said “One day.”<br />
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It was only a couple of days later that a series of random events led to me being at a park where I wouldn’t normally have been. I was with Rosa in the playground and we noticed a fire engine parked at the shopping centre, which seemed odd, but there were only a couple of people standing around so no emergency. Then another, bigger fire engine appeared, with a huge cherry picker on the back. Now any novice who has read her share of Golden Books can tell you that can mean only one thing: a cat needed rescuing. I didn’t think these things happened in real life either, but there you are.<br />
<br />
We walked over to the people standing below the trees where the fire engines were parked and found a woman holding a towel. On closer inspection, we found that the towel contained the most gorgeous kitten in all creation, who was purring loudly and completely unfazed by the ridiculous scene unfolding before us. In keeping with the whole storybook theme, this kitten (we found out later it was a she, though there wasn’t ever much doubt) appeared to have escaped from some kind of palace, where she might have spent all day lounging on a velvet cushion and having her silken coat and mile-long whiskers groomed by a thousand tiny cat worshippers.<br />
<br />
But she was not in the palace any more. On closer inspection she was covered in fleas, her coat was dirty and she had either given up or never really learnt how to properly groom herself. She had an accomplice, too. Another kitten had high-tailed it up the nearest tree and was refusing to budge, hence the fire engine. Apparently they had been found in the park together, but this little princess was slightly more keen to be rescued than her friend.<br />
<br />
When I saw this sweetest of kittens, I couldn’t believe the universe could be quite so generous, I patted her and we both purred, and although I was starting to tremble with the excitement of it all, I managed to ask the lady who was holding her whether she would be taking her home. “I have two cats already,” she said apologetically, “so I really can’t”. Cue dream sequence music, soft focus close-up of Her Royal Highness the luckiest cat in the world, and roll credits. <br />
<br />
We took her to the nearest vet - she rode in the car on my lap and fell asleep - and they confirmed she was female, about five months old and not microchipped. We named her Violet, which suits her beautiful grey eyes and silken coat perfectly, and now she sleeps on a velvet cushion whenever she can and is surrounded by cat worshippers of many shapes and sizes, the largest and most devout of whom is me. Because whenever I see her I marvel at how she found me just when I needed her. And I hope she would say the same about me.<br />
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Next: The arrival of Oberon<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-54052352435409831772014-04-25T15:56:00.002+10:002014-04-25T15:56:26.822+10:00The story of Mao<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
This is a story that’s close to my heart. In fact, so close to my heart that I hesitate even to tell it, in case I lose my grip on it and what it means to me. But I will tell it, because in many years I may need to be reminded.<br />
<br />
This is the story of Mao, a beautiful cat who found our family when there were only four of us, and made himself a part of it. He was a Tonkinese cat, a noble and handsome boy who loved us from the very beginning. We took a little toy mouse with us on the day he chose us, and we waded into a house full of Tonkinese kittens who were running and jumping in all directions and all looked very much the same. We threw our toy mouse into the blur of kitten and out strode a sweet but self-assured bundle with the mouse in his mouth, straight to us.<br />
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I used to joke that he was the cat I’d wanted when I was single, when I would have been able to devote so much spare time to just sitting with him on my lap, but he didn’t seem to mind too much that my lap only became available long after dark, when the house fell strangely silent. And when another baby arrived, the lap stopped appearing altogether for a while, along with the silence.<br />
<br />
He befriended our Labrador and they often shared a bed, unless Sunday was chased off and then Mao had it all to himself. We’d often see them running full-pelt around the backyard, Sunday in front and Mao at his heels, tail in the air, then seconds later they’d come back the other way. It was hard to tell who was enjoying the chase more.<br />
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He was the Yul Brynner of the cat world, and I could see him in the role of the king in The King And I, all fancy pants and endearingly misguided ego, strutting about with his nose in the air but too lovable to resist. We all loved him, and he loved us back. So when he suddenly became very sick we were all worried. With good reason. Mao had acute kidney failure, and he spent six days at the vet, during which nobody was sure he was coming home. He did come home, and we loved him even more in the hope that it might fix the one thing I knew deep down could never really be fixed. He came good, with the help of daily injections of fluid and a special diet, and he was more loving than ever. He took to being carried around the house on my shoulders, and we walked him outside on a lead so he could get some sunshine. But it couldn’t last forever.<br />
<br />
We said goodbye to Mao in early March, and I stayed with the girls, all of us weeping and me trying to console them, while Randal took him to the vet. He came home with the body of our beautiful Mao, who we buried in the backyard under all the flowers we could find. I told the girls that Mao was in cat heaven now, chasing little mice and sleeping in the sunshine, and he would never be sick again. Eventually we stopped crying, but I struggled for several days to come to terms with losing someone who’d become almost a part of me. The things we love most about our pets - their companionship, their apparent empathy, their unconditional love - are the same things that threaten to ruin us when we ultimately have to say goodbye to them.<br />
<br />
But then I slowly realised that Mao will never really leave. He is in my heart, and in all our hearts, and I see him curled up there, purring and eternally content, whenever I miss him (which is almost always). And when Rosa, who is four, asks where Mao is now, I tell her he is in our hearts, and he will be there forever and always.<br />
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Next: The story of Violet<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-32611025996143742662014-04-12T20:18:00.002+10:002014-04-12T20:21:18.110+10:00On not falling into booby trapsThe last time I went bra shopping I was on a mission. A mission that involved leaving behind my third soggy collection of maternity bras and replacing them with new <i>brassieres, </i>distinguishable by their glorious absence of clips and by their focus almost entirely on form, not function. I wanted my next bra to be beautiful, comfortable and flattering. I wanted to be able to put it on in the morning and not touch it or even think about it<i> for the whole day. </i>No itchy lace, no metal underwires and no wonderbras.<br />
<br />
Ultimately I found the very bra for me, so perfect that I bought three in various colours. That was more than three years ago, and they have served me well up until about six months ago, when they started to lose their elasticity (much like my skin) and failed to fit properly (much like all my other clothes) while also looking very much the worse for wear (much like me, and all my other clothes).<br />
<br />
So a couple of weeks ago I ventured back into the bra department of a certain store which is known for selling big labels at small prices and I must say I was flabbergasted. There were literally hundreds of bras in this place, all on sale and altogether comprising roughly half the world's supply of sponge. Seriously, one misdirected match and the whole place would have gone up like Cracker Night 1978.<br />
<br />
I don't care if you want to hoist your tits up under your chin, double their size and create a cleavage that small animals can disappear into. I really don't. It's entirely your business. But surely we should have other options. There was not a single bra in this shop, at least not in my very modest (some would say small, others would say "Why do you need to buy a bra anyway?") size that did not have at least half an inch of padding. Even the teeny tiny training bras, which in my day consisted of two nylon triangles that joined at the front with a sliding hook, would not have looked out of place in certain street windows in Amsterdam.<br />
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What is going on? Not only have we deluded ourselves into thinking that our own assets are not good enough, we're conning our daughters into thinking that too, before they even have a chance to decide otherwise. It's taken me 41 years, but I'm at a point where I just want a bra that's comfortable, that says "I care just enough to not leave the house without a bra on", as opposed to "Give me one more throw cushion and I'm wearing a two-seater lounge".<br />
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We should take a stand. Maybe take all the abominable foam bras out there and burn 'em. No lighter fluid required.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-88749914909298758302013-11-05T12:43:00.000+11:002013-11-05T12:44:20.091+11:00the greer womanI have not read The Female Eunuch. I don’t know that much about Germaine Greer except that she did her best work in the 1960s and 70s and more recently has been known for criticising a former female prime minister’s choice of outfits because they made said PM’s bum look big.<br />
I have watched Greer on ABC’s Q & A and enjoyed her witty retorts at right-wing nutcases, and last night’s program was no exception, featuring possibly the biggest right-wing nutcase I’ve ever seen, one UK author Peter Hitchens. The rest of the panel, writer Hanna Rosin and writer/activist Dan Savage, did their level best not to jump over Tony Jones and punch Hitchens in the face when he suggested the world was hurtling towards certain doom led by same-sex couples and their evil, selfish, drug-taking, alcohol-chugging ways.<br />
It was a lively affair, despite the more eloquent surroundings of the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. But then it was part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, so we had fair warning.<br />
But then a woman, probably in her 40s, dared stand and pose a question to the panel. Specifically to Greer, she asked was it possible the women’s movement had gone too far? Had women moved away from their roles as nurturers by outsourcing the raising of their own children to paid strangers? Were we raising ever more narcissistic children as a result, and missing out on time with them, more tired and depressed than ever?<br />
From my position on the lounge, I gave this woman a standing ovation. Because for the past several months I’ve been asking myself the very same thing. I am at home with my three-year-old daughter every day, for lots of reasons: because I was made redundant last year, because I did not have formal childcare arranged for her, because I do not have a job and therefore cannot afford childcare but also because I cannot get a job without first having childcare arranged. Turn left at the rock and you’ll find me just in front of the hard place. But I am also at home because I choose to be. I want to be. I know from experience, having had two other three-year-old daughters in my life at various times in the past decade, that this time does not last. One day you’re sitting on a very small chair opposite your sweet child, sharing Vegemite toast and discussing the various shades of green, and the next you’re driving home from school in tears because they are not in the back seat any more and you won’t see them again until 3.30.<br />
This is not to say it’s all peachy. I have had many days in the past year where I’ve felt like I almost ceased to exist. I am the unpaid washerwoman, cook, cleaner and scullery maid, and on the lowest of low days I question my sanity and my ability to be a good mother. Actually, I question that last bit almost on a daily basis.<br />
There are working women who do all these things too, I know. I did them all and worked part-time up until last year, but even that small window when I was at work was enough for me to come up for air. It gave me some balance. And sometimes I struggle to find any silver linings, but the struggle always passes and I am so grateful for the time I get to share with my littlest little girl.<br />
Now back to the studio. What will Greer say? How will she respond to this woman who is asking, almost pleading, why is it not okay to just be with our children? I’m afraid the answer made me feel sick, and it still does make me so angry and frustrated and disappointed that I’m not sure what to do with it. This woman, who stood before a huge audience inside the Opera House and thousands more watching from home, was laughed at. Openly. By everyone on the panel except the right-wing nutcase. Savage gave a flippant “Well we should just enslave women again ..” and Rosin was similarly dismissive. When she finally got her turn, Greer was equally condescending and even concluded that what we need is more nursery schools (daycare centres) and preschools. Now Germaine Greer may be many things, but maternal is not one that instantly springs to mind. I think she might benefit from giving women the right to decide what is best for their own children.<br />
I can’t believe that such a lively, informed and educated debate on subjects as diverse as hook-up apps and the decline of Christianity descended so rapidly. I was so disappointed I just wanted to slink into bed and forget it ever happened. But I couldn’t. The questioner (one Kimberley Adler, and I wish I could thank her and say how sorry I am for the way she was treated) even had to clarify her point because it was taken and shredded like a lump of raw meat in the lions’ enclosure. But it was to no avail. They weren’t listening.<br />
I just want to know, if Germaine Greer’s whole life has been dedicated to making women’s lives better, and fighting the good fight for equality in the workforce and in society as a whole, why is there still this one category of women who are worthy of nothing more than denigration, humiliation and contempt? I thought it was about a woman’s right to choose. I thought we were all in this together. I thought we could decide to just be women, and for once stop trying to be men.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-8732933140772643062013-10-07T19:54:00.002+11:002013-10-07T19:59:58.233+11:00this one, she's a beauty<br />
The Song of Wandering Aengus<br />
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<br />
<i>I went out to the hazel wood,</i><br />
<i>Because a fire was in my head,</i><br />
<i>And cut and peeled a hazel wand,</i><br />
<i>And hooked a berry to a thread;</i><br />
<br />
<i>And when white moths were on the wing,</i><br />
<i>And moth-like stars were flickering out,</i><br />
<i>I dropped the berry in a stream</i><br />
<i>And caught a little silver trout.</i><br />
<br />
<i>When I had laid it on the floor</i><br />
<i>I went to blow the fire a-flame,</i><br />
<i>But something rustled on the floor,</i><br />
<i>And some one called me by my name:</i><br />
<i>It had become a glimmering girl</i><br />
<i>With apple blossom in her hair</i><br />
<i>Who called me by my name and ran</i><br />
<i>And faded through the brightening air.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Though I am old with wandering</i><br />
<i>Through hollow lands and hilly lands,</i><br />
<i>I will find out where she has gone,</i><br />
<i>And kiss her lips and take her hands;</i><br />
<i>And walk among long dappled grass,</i><br />
<i>And pluck till time and times are done</i><br />
<i>The silver apples of the moon,</i><br />
<i>The golden apples of the sun.</i><br />
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W.B. Yeats</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055679717717628232.post-650883888962895962013-10-04T20:52:00.000+10:002013-10-04T20:52:55.835+10:00pause for celebration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I used to love my birthday. Even up until my 30s, when babies and toddlers and bone-deep fatigue threatened to derail my excitement for them, I would find myself childlishly restless at the prospect of a day to just celebrate being born. This feeling began creeping up on me a few weeks back when I realised my birthday was not far away, but it didn't last very long. Long enough to count to forty-one.<br />
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But in the past few days I've come to a new appreciation of the whole birthday thing. Now I see them as a time of renewal. A time to let go of old fears, old foes, old habits, old ways of thinking. A time to let go of anything that's no longer serving you and make room in your life for something brand new.<br />
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It's my birthday tomorrow and I'm feeling excited, but not in a child-like way any more. Unless you count my anticipation of cake. Because that never gets old.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0