getting to the bottom of the deep blue sea

This weekend my home town is abuzz with the inaugural Newcastle Writers Festival  and this morning as I took in the spectacular view of Newcastle Beach from a nearby hotel, I had the incredible privilege of listening to five writers share their thoughts on the ocean and why it inspires them. Robert Drewe, Rebecca Oliver, James Bradley, Tim Baker and Gerry Bobsien had the room enthralled, which was not an easy task given the show being staged behind them by the Pacific Ocean and a pod of dolphins, and I came away feeling very inspired and very grateful. I immediately visited Rebecca Olive's blog and felt more inspired, more grateful and a tiny bit astounded by how things, words and people and ideas and inspiration, can come to you in unexpected ways. One post of Rebecca's rang particularly true for me, so much so that I think I should print it out and put it on my fridge (or my computer):

From 'The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do', over at McSweeney's: 
Procrastination is an alluring siren taunting you to Google the country where Balki from Perfect Strangers was from, and to arrange sticky notes on your dog in the shape of hilarious dog shorts. A wicked temptress beckoning you to watch your children, and take showers. Well, it’s time to look procrastination in the eye and tell that seafaring wench, “Sorry not today, today I write.”

don't dream it's over

Do you remember the first boy you ever loved?
I was 14. He was much older, but I didn’t care. I’d watched him on Countdown completely smitten, and when my friends bought me Crowded House the album for my birthday I was gone for all money.
I went home from school that afternoon, and every afternoon for months, and dropped the stylus on my Dad’s record player, just waiting for that voice .. She came all the way from America .. and on and on he sang, while I read the print off the liner notes and memorised every line.
I loved Neil Finn then, with every fibre of my being. I loved him so much that the feelings I had for him as a 14-year-old girl have never really gone away. They’re hidden by other things - let’s call them reality - until I hear a Crowded House song on the radio and that voice is singing Shakespeare to me all over again. Or until, as so happened last Monday night, I am sitting in a front-row box seat in the Sydney Opera House concert hall, watching my first love and trying not to let my heart beat right out of its chest.
When I heard that Neil Finn and Paul Kelly were touring together, it was like a Christian being told that Jesus was moving in next door and bringing his Dad. I was 19 when I first fell in love with Paul Kelly and his stories - a little bit older but not much wiser .. Kiss me quick, kiss me warm, put your dress on and hurry back home .. I knew I couldn’t miss it. But I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it - at all. What if I was overcome and had to be ushered out of the room, collapsing in the foyer in a puddle of hormones and emotional immaturity? What if I just started sobbing uncontrollably?
I’m not ashamed to say that both of these scenarios were a real possibility as the lights dropped and the Finn/Kelly experience began. There they both were, guitars in full song, and I was mesmerised.  I soon let go of any tenuous link to my real, 40-year-old life and just relished every minute, like I was 14 (or 19) all over again.
Several times I was struck with complete awe. There was Paul Kelly, singing his beautiful heart out, making new poetry out of the words of Neil Finn. And there beside him was - yes, it really was - Neil Finn.
It went like that for almost three hours, and as each hour passed I started to dread it coming to an end. But after three encores and more beauty than I could ever have imagined, the two men returned to centre stage, picked up their guitars and sang Moon River.
I could have wept and kept on weeping, but my heart was too full.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Us3H72U4Q

why i love op shops #362

Last night I watched the endlessly enthusiastic Jennifer Byrne and friends as they counted down the  publicly voted 10 best Australian books. I've watched First Tuesday Book Club a few times lately and it always amazes and inspires me how passionate the guests and regulars are about books. I have to confess that when reading was my job I lost interest in doing it for pleasure, even if I could have found the time. But lately I've found the old urge coming back, the desire to lose myself in another place, with people I've never met but who I know I will miss, just for a little while, when I turn the final page.
So I watched last night and again I was amazed and inspired. I am compiling, as we speak, a summer reading list that includes The Harp In The South by Ruth Park (number four on the list, and they all loved it) and of course, the book that I and probably most of Australia confidently tipped as number one, Cloudstreet. I have read it before, a long time ago, and I no longer have a copy of it but as I watched last night and saw four book fanatics get all glassy-eyed as they spoke of Tim Winton's beautiful and brilliant novel, I knew I had to read it again. Starting as soon as possible.
Today I was on a mission. I visited the first of four op shops down the street, sure I would find a copy in one of them. In it I found The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay, number three on the list, and a brand new copy of William McInnes and Sarah Watt's Worse Things Happen At Sea, published only this year. And they cost me one dollar each.
Next stop: no luck, but as I kneeled before the rickety pine bookcase in op shop number three my eyes fell on the bright orange spine of a Penguin paperback, and there it was. Almost perfect. And for another dollar, it was mine. Oh Cloudstreet, I have missed you so.

a new address

So, I have a new baby. Not a human baby, whoa there, although I am completely addicted to One Born Every Minute but that's another story. No, my new baby is in fact a new blog, which is not to say that I will be abandoning Harriet at any point, although bless her she's been left to her own devices for quite some time. My new blog is about homes and why they are not just houses. My home, maybe even your home. I saw many people's houses in this past year, while I was writing a weekly Home feature for the Herald, and I waited on the threshold of each house with that same feeling of excitement and anticipation of what I would find when the owner opened their front door. Mostly I found not just a house, but a home, but the recipe for what made that difference was never precisely the same. I saw beautiful homes and met beautiful people, and the experience has inspired me to keep opening new doors. Please come and visit me here and let me know what you think. If you send me some happy home snaps I might even come and visit you!

no longer necessary

Redundant is not a pretty word. It conjures up others, like outdated, unwanted, archaic, obsolete, surplus. to. requirements. It used to be my job to think of several different words to describe the same thing. My sixth class teacher Mr Snape clearly had a premonition of this, since he awarded me a Collins Thesaurus (yes, a real book made out of paper in which to look up synonyms, since we're on the subject of redundant) as part of my prize for being dux of the school. It was not a very big school, I hasten to add, but a small victory is still a victory and there were few to be had once I started high school. I guess I have Mr Snape to thank for starting me on the path to journalism. Who knew that would turn out so well? I don't wish to wallow in my status as ''redundant'', and apart from the odd, brief wave of panic and self-pity I haven't been. It has forced me to put in place a few streamlining measures of my own, in fact. Turns out there are quite a few redundant factors in my life, starting with five garbage bags of toys that were recently deposited in a local charity bin. There are also several pieces of furniture but they're not so easy to throw in the back of the car so they're in limbo at present. The reading of local newspapers? Redundant. The wearing of shoes other than rubber thongs? Redundant. And I've freed up huge amounts of room in the cavernous storage compartment between the two front seats of my car. This was once filled with coins to feed hungry parking meters. These days it's more likely to feed hungry children ice cream from the drive-through on the way home from school. So I like to think I've turned the whole redundancy thing on its head. A bit like all those hip young things who I believe are called ''slashies'' because they don't like to be pigeonholed into one vocation. They're IT specialists/film directors/burger salesmen, or something like that. They don't get sacked from anything, because they get in first. They're all, "You're fired as my boss because I can do SOOO much better than this job". Or something like that. I won't ever be a slashie, of course. And I'm not looking for the next big thing. I'm just trying to get by on the little things for now. Like the dog-eared Collins Thesaurus that gave my 12-year-old self such hope for the future.

the way in

I went to see a dear friend today and she reminded me, as she always does, that the little struggles which sometimes threaten to overwhelm me are just that - little. No less a struggle, of course, but when kept in perspective with the great wide world and the endlessly expansive universe, hardly worth losing your head over. I am so grateful for her presence in my life, she has taken me by the hand so many times and shown me how to save myself. And every time, it seems a little harder to get lost.
Now that I'm awake again, the world seems literally buzzing with potential. Quiet, determined potential. Like the hundreds of tiny buds on our peach tree, which has for many years been my anchor. Its branches are reaching higher this year than they ever have, and it is fit to burst with impending blossom. Just to add to its mighty promise, there are three egg sacks on its branches that have been laid by praying mantis, the little holy men of the insect world, harbingers of good things and prophets of positivity. Amen to that.

objects in the rear-view mirror

I have never learned to drive a manual car. This is because I cannot focus on two things at once. I am either steering the car and taking care to stay on the road and not hit anything, or I am changing gears. I cannot be doing both. And now I find that more than two decades after getting my driver's licence, my brain has not progressed one inch. In fact it may even have crawled back a centimetre or two. I went to a workshop today on the use of Photoshop and Illustrator in blogs. I love my blog and I wanted it to look prettier, to get people's attention and maybe even, one day, to make me some money. But it turns out I cannot be creative and functional at the same time. The technology is beyond me. Sometimes I wonder if it's not all beyond me. Or behind me.