Category Archives: Family

Writing as activism

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Things seem to be pushing me lately to get writing again about the things I talk passionately about. Heated discussion (not necessarily heated because of disagreements) has always been a part of my life. My parents always encouraged me to think for myself, to find out when I didn’t know, to constantly question.

Talking about literature as activism (and activism for literature) at the Academy of Words started this ball rolling. Then I went back to uni and my teacher talked about how we use words to explore the consequences of the world’s happenings (“If this is so, then what are the implications?”). Then I read some of my uni texts and found myself sobbing by myself on my couch, hoping my housemates wouldn’t come home in time to see me like that (even with the explanation “Kids with cancer”, a red-eyed 25-year-old with tears running down her face, unable to speak properly, is not a pretty sight). Then my brother posted this to his new blog. He’s doing what’s basically an environmental science degree at ANU, and it’s not unusual for a phone conversation between us to be entirely about worm farms or gardens or cooking or food or what’s wrong with society. Our conversations aren’t short. But I’ve never really spent much time writing about them before.

Everything seems to be pushing me back towards writing about what intrigues me, what sets off that fire in my belly.

See, I tend to write to explore issues or relationships that intrigue me.

In fiction I write about characters with dementia, or men who are trying to deal with grief and still be ‘manly’, or middle-aged siblings trying to deal with their parents’ old age and death. These are situations I’ve not been in myself, but things I’ve observed in other people’s lives. And I just wonder, you know? I just wonder what it’s like to be them, how it feels. I want to come closer to understanding, and in sharing it with other people, I hope to provide an opportunity for others to at least think twice about people they pass in the street.

In non-fiction I write about food and cooking, yoga… Well. See, I’d like to write a whole lot more about some of the things that anger me, or frustrate me. Like some of the muddy definitions of ‘climate change’ that my brother refers to here. I’d like to write about lots of the ideas that he and I discuss. And lots of the ideas that I discuss with other members of my family, and those of my friends who are willing (or have no choice but) to listen to me ramble on in such a non-sensical way.

I’d also like to write a little more about the concepts I ramble about in my yoga classes (and write about on my yoga teacher blog), while my students hang their heads in paschimottanasana. I wonder, sometimes, if they’re wishing I’d just shut up and tell them about their hamstrings, or hurry up and get to the bit where I make the little relaxation-inducing adjustments on them. But they keep coming back, so maybe they don’t mind (or they suffer through it to get to the relaxation bit).

Anyway, I don’t really know what I’m getting at here. This is a bit of a rant. And this is me telling someone what my ideas and goals are, rather than just setting about achieving them — which apparently I’m not supposed to do if I actually want to achieve them.

I feel like my brain’s switching back on after a little rest. I guess that’s not a bad thing.

Monday Project submission: Redux

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For my response to this month’s theme, I returned to some of short pieces I wrote last time I made a big move. Since most of my energy in February seemed to be taken up with moving house, it seemed appropriate somehow.

Unfortunately I was unable to get it together enough to actually put the story together into something that made sense. But then perhaps that’s okay, since it’s really about the chaos of packing up a life. I thought I’d type out what’s in my writing journal pretty much verbatim. I’d love to hear if you think this is going anywhere.

~

Her fingers were dry from handling all the cardboard and she had a collection of bruises on her legs. But before her stood a pile of brown cardboard. It sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by the absence of her furniture and the trails of dust and cobwebs that had been hidden beneath it.

The curtains were freshly washed, still a little damp and slightly crushed. The space around the box mountain looked smaller than it had when the contents of the boxes had been spread around it.

You stand next to her in the doorway as she looks around again and sighs.

“Why do I own so much crap?” She doesn’t want an answer.

Another box marked ‘books’. There have been thousands of these already, you think. Your daughter’s reading habit doesn’t quite keep up with her book-buying one. She sighs again, running her fingers over her own handwriting on yet another box of books, then follows you downstairs with it.

~

You worried vaguely about having an accident as you drove through the city, thought maybe you should pull over until the tears subsided. But then you knew you’d only turn around if you stopped, and that wouldn’t help anyone.

She’d looked small in the rear vision mirror as you drove away. Not at all grown up. You knew she was probably crying too – and that her ridiculous new boyfriend would have no idea how to handle it. He’d helped her find the dingy flat that was to be her first home away from home, and in doing so had proved to you that he had no idea what your daughter might need.

The place was filthy, for starters. Your daughter’s new housemates had layers of newspaper on the dining table so they could just throw away the top one after a meal, rather than wipe down the table; the drain in the bathroom was full of hair; everything was covered in grimy dust. Your daughter’s bedroom was full of someone else’s furniture. Even with some of the knick knacks and books of hers that you’d brought down with the rest of her clothes, she looked out of place in the room.

You told yourself, as you continued to drive away from her, that you’d only thought all that because you were being overprotective – that probably also explained why you thought her boyfriend was an idiot. The thought wasn’t comforting though. It only made you cry more – you felt sorry for yourself. And it wasn’t true anyway.

~

In your garage there are three boxes with her name on them, and several bags that aren’t labelled but that you know are hers. About once every six months – or more often if you haven’t heard from her in a while – you wake up early, pad down the internal stairs and stand in front of the small pile of her things. Both you and her mother are guilty of reminding her a little too often that these things are taking up space in your garage, but if she came to take them away you’d be upset.

The boxes are labelled in her neat handwriting – their contents described in brief detail on the masking tape that keeps them shut. They are mostly full of old things: high school and university books, photo albums, knick knacks, CDs. One box is simply labelled “special things”. Many times, as you’ve stood in front of her boxes and bags, you’ve wondered what constitutes “special” to your daughter. What would she pull out of that box? Undoubtedly it would be a collection of things that mean nothing to you, and whose story you will never know – trinkets from old friends and boyfriends, from far-flung places; letters from people you’ve never known, photos of people you’ve never met.

One day she’ll come back for these boxes – she might even open the “special things” box. The extra space in the garage would be good, certainly, but you’re not sure you could bear watching her going through them. You like the idea that you have a part of her here, neatly contained and labelled, and somehow mysterious.

Often, as you look at the boxes and run your fingers over her handwriting, you wonder what she is doing now, all those plane-hours away. You like to imagine that she is sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea, or reading to her own small daughter.

~

You don’t understand why, but she feels she needs to do it. She’s packing up again – this time leaving him, when it’s always been him leaving her. The him has changed over the years, but it’s been pretty much the same story every time. Being in a relationship with your daughter, you imagine, is very intense.

But no, this time she’s leaving him, and that’s at least half the reason why you think maybe he’s the right one. She’s determined though; packing boxes, taking things that are definitely his, leaving things that are definitely hers because she’s unsure in her frenzy. As she packs she babbles at you, her voice so close to tears. You should really be packing in another room, to speed the process up, but you can’t bear to leave her alone when she’s like this.

Even a little girl she was prone to working herself into a frenzy. Never over nothing, but always over something that didn’t really deserve all the energy she was giving it.

And there is the other half of the reason you think he’s the right one. Determined as she says she is, every part of her seems to be fighting against her own decision. Her hands shake, as if saying no to the words that are coming out of her mouth.

Moving House

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This last fortnight I’ve been moving house. And it’s been harder than any other move I’ve made. Harder even than moving out of home, or moving from Melbourne to Sydney. It’s strange, because I’ve only moved from one end of Newtown to the other. Both the aforementioned moves involved a great deal more distance, and probably more obvious emotional upheaval. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why this move has been as difficult as it has — and wondering whether I’ve just turned into a big wimp.

It’s been different to any other move I’ve made though. For starters, it was a reluctant move. My housemates and I got a phone call halfway through December telling us the owner of our house was returning from the UK and would like her house back. Two of my housemates were already planning on leaving (they’re travelling around Australia this year in a pop-top van — you can read about their adventures here), but Housemate Three and I were planning on staying in the house. When we realised we’d all be leaving the house at the same time, the phrase “end of an era” found its way into conversation more than a few times.

This house had become home, these housemates like family.

So I guess we began the process of sorting, packing and moving with… well, heavy hearts. Sometime towards the middle of January, I found myself thinking about how I’d only walk this route to a yoga class (or get off the train at this station, or stare out my bedroom windows, or go for a walk in this park, or see this or that neighbour on the street) a finite number of times. And every now and then the four of us would be standing together in the kitchen talking and/or cooking, and one of us would sigh. Sentimentality became a big part of our last weeks in the house.

Then I suppose there was the move itself, which was a bit of a shit fight, if I’m honest. We were really settled in that place. Which is really just a nice way of saying we had a lot of crap, spread out all over the place. Packing, sorting and cleaning was not fun.

For the fortnight it took us all to pack up and move out, I felt like I didn’t really have a home. My new housemates and I had picked up the keys to our new house, so a lot of my stuff was in the new place, but so much of me remained in the old place. For the last week I was sleeping at the new house, and getting up each morning to go to the old house to work more on moving out. That week felt more like ten weeks.

That last week the five of us (four housemates plus Housemate Three’s girlfriend) went out for dinner and drinks — a kind of farewell. I had such a great time with my little sharehouse family.

And I drank a little too much wine. Getting up the next day was difficult.

When we finally handed the keys back last Friday, and went out together for a final housemate breakfast, I think we were all ready to leave. We were glad the move was over (we were also very hungry — we’d all been up since 6 or 7am and we were eating at midday). So in a way, I guess the sadness that had made the process so difficult in the first place was kind of worked through by the horror of the move itself. Or at least pushed to the background for now. I’ll miss that house, and I’ll miss my housemates, but for now I’m ready to focus on what’s going on in my life right now.

I’m excited to be working again. I’ve got writing projects slowly starting to make their way from my head onto paper; next week I’m going to Adelaide for Format Festival’s Academy of Words; and I’m preparing for some new yoga classes I’ll start teaching in the next month.

This move though, and the process of moving in general, is still flitting about inside my head. I’m writing about moving for this month’s Monday Project theme, and I’m thinking again about some of the other writing I’ve done on travel, moving and connection to place.

As difficult as it’s been, moving house has certainly got the cogs turning again. Change, as they say, is as good as a holiday. Except that I feel like I need a holiday to recover from this particular change.

A Strange Picture

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This, believe it or not, is a picture of me. I’ve got cat ears on, but I’ve no idea how I managed to get my face looking so animal-like as well.

Occasionally I go back through all the photos on my phone, camera and computer, and I usually manage to find at least one strange one. Especially if I’ve spent time with my brothers — the younger of the two likes to borrow a camera and take macro shots of… well, anything really. I have to take credit for this one though.

I seem to have gone through a stage of looking back over old art journals, photos and writing journals lately. It’s sort of a strange concept, looking back through yourself for inspiration. And it’s funny just how much of your own brain-stuff you forget. Memory is an intriguing thing.

Manly Wharf

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As I sat in Hugo’s, having a beer with my parents, these kids jumped off the wharf, swam to shore and came back to jump off again and again. Their jumping was accompanied by lots of shrieking and laughing. The weather in Sydney has been so fickle of late, and that afternoon, with a cold beer in hand, looking at these kids getting in and out of the water, it really felt like summer. What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Looking at this picture again, I was reminded of some others I’d taken while I was waiting for someone at St Kilda beach on my last visit to Melbourne. There’s just something about a large body of water that’s so awe-inspiring.

It seems appropriate, in a post about water, to mention the disasterous flooding that many communities in Queensland are experiencing right now. I’m sure it doesn’t seem like summer to them. There are lots of different avenues for putting a donation towards rescue, sheltering those who’ve evacuated, and rebuilding when the water subsides. But this is a good place to start.

New Year’s Resolutions

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Like many people, I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Eve. I don’t like the pressure to do something really fun and amazing, but nevertheless feel I should be doing something. This year, I spent the night in Canberra at a BBQ with some of my wonderful friends. It was low-key, which I’m beginning to realise is exactly how I like most things in my life to be. And because there was no pressure, I really did have fun.

For the first time in a long time (maybe ever) I actually had several options for New Year’s celebrations. Maybe as a result of agonising over which I would choose, I thought a lot about what the celebration at this time of year really is for me. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about why we celebrate the beginning of a new year quite as much as we do. But when I eventually came up with an answer, it helped me feel comfortable about the things I was saying no to.

New Year, for me, is simple really: it’s a chance to reflect on what has been and to look forward to what might be.

All of the events I was invited to would have allowed me to do that, but some of them would have come with the added pressure of getting somewhere and spending money that I just don’t have. So I chose the simplest of the otherwise equally appealing options.

My Mum said to me the other day, as I thumbed through the year 12 art diary we’d just found in a box in the garage, that I’ve always been a dreamer. I guess she’s right. I dream, I plan. I’m pro-active about lots of things — I’m no stranger to jumping into the deep end, hoping it will all work out — but there are so many more things I’ve dreamt up that never make it into reality.

In 2010, some of those dreamer-plans actually started to happen. And it was great.

And hard.

And great.

Looking through my old art diary, I felt an affinity with my seventeen-year-old self that I’ve not felt in a long time. She was in equal parts excited and confused by all the possibilities that were coming her way (and she wrote terrible poetry). I feel like that now.

That afternoon I sat down to write out some resolutions, something I’m not sure I’ve done before. None of them are particularly wacky or difficult to achieve. But it is a list I think I’ll need to come back to more than once throughout the year, because much of what’s on there is stuff that slips through the cracks: keeping in touch with friends (which I’m terrible at), writing regularly, getting to the arts events I want to.

I know I’m not going to do everything on this list. It’s not unusual for me to expect far too much of myself. But if I can do just half, this time next year I’ll be very pleased with myself.

Happy New Year!

——

PS. Upon re-reading this post, I’m conscious of several claims about my character that seem contradictory. This is something that’s been pointed out to me by a friend once before. My theory is that most of us are walking contradictions. Unless it’s just me.

The people in my head

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how many people I have living in my head. Characters, I mean. Fictional ones. Some of them I’ve been getting to know for more than four years now, others I’ve just met.

A few weeks ago I was talking to one of my students about some characters from a story she’s writing, and halfway through my spiel on character development I realised how strange it might sound that I was asking her to let these people live in her head. She noticed my hesitation and called me on it, as teenagers are wont to do, and laughed a lot when I pointed out how crazy I sounded. I’m pretty sure she does think I’m mad (not just because I talk about people living in my head), but she seemed to understand what I was saying about character.

My characters get under my skin. I care about them just almost as much as I do about people in real life. I see them in real-life people — a gesture here, a phrase there. But I don’t think any of my characters are based on a particular person. They become people in their own right.

I often get my students to do writing exercise to help them get to know their characters. I realised the other day that I’m very bad at actually doing these exercises myself. Oops.

One of my favourite character-writing exercises comes from the Voiceworks blog, Virgule.

Answer these questions about your character:

1. What is your character afraid of?
2. What does your character do to de-stress?
3. What makes your character angry?
4. Who was the last person your character talked to on the phone?
5. In what position does your character sleep?

Whenever I give this one to my students they laugh at the last question. Perhaps rightly so — it is an odd question. But odd probably because it’s such an intimate thing to know about someone. I don’t even know what position my brothers or my parents sleep in. I sleep on my back, one leg straight, the other bent so the knee falls out to the side; the hand of the straight leg rests on my belly, the hand of the bent leg out to the side. I don’t seem to have a preference for one side. How do you sleep?

I’ve been thinking a little about some of my characters, and how they might sleep. Have they always slept this way? Does their position change when someone else is in the bed with them? Why do that sleep like that?

And this is why I like this exercise so much. The answers often come automatically (given that these people really do seem to live inside my head), but they bring with them a bunch of other questions.

Direction and disruption

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I’ve been quiet here, I know. I’ve been busy with various types of work, I guess, and I can tentatively say that things are starting to move down a path I’m pleased with.

But more than that, I think I’ve been quiet here because I’m not quite sure what to do with this space. I started writing here as a space to share fiction I was working on, just in little bits and pieces. Then I tried to make it a little more about the process of writing and reading. Then motivation and inspiration crept in, closely followed by food and yoga. And now it’s just a completely muddled space, with no real direction. Which, funnily enough, is how my life has been for the last six months or so! Haha…

I’m still struggling with the direction thing. Even though I say that things are moving, slowly, along a path that I’m pleased with, I feel like I should maybe be thinking a little bit more about where I’m stepping next. I want to do so much. I want to write, I want to teach yoga, I want to cook, travel, play music. I want to work with sound again. But how on earth does one fit it all in? How does one find the motivation to be proactive with so many things?

One of my favourite bloggers, Claire, wrote recently about feeling like almost everything she was doing only to a ‘good enough’ level, and I must admit that rang true for me.  Can one person really do everything that I want to do? Does it just take good planning?

A couple of weeks ago I was house-sitting for my parents in Canberra, and it gave me a bit of space. I wasn’t working any of my usual contact hours with students (yoga or otherwise), but I still had quite a long work-to-do list. Part of me wanted to put it aside and really try and nut out some kind of plan for how to move forward. I struggled for a few days, deciding what to do, but eventually I put aside all my work and wrote out some plans. Nothing particularly ordered. I just listed each of the major things I want to do with my life and then rambled on and on underneath the heading until I thought maybe I’d worked out some kind of plan.

Most days I went for a walk with Bert.

And I talked to him. Asked him questions about my life, about the direction I was going in. He just grinned at me and lept up on a ledge or ran off into a bit of long grass, but it was nice to just be able to talk nonsense and not have anyone judging me. (Unless of course there were other people about that I couldn’t see — the spot up behind my parents’ house is pretty secluded.)

At the end of the week I was excited. I had some plans for next year, and it looked as though I was going to be able to do pretty much everything I want to — including travel and more study.

But then I came back to Sydney.

I’d been away for nearly two weeks by this point, and it’s taken me nearly another week to feel settled again. I haven’t been sure what to do with myself, how to fill out my days. It’s a combination of quite a few things that have left me feeling like this, not the least of which is the fact that, even though I’ve got some idea of what I’m going to do next year, I don’t know what I want from the next three months or so.

So I’m not done with thinking and planning yet. I’m hoping it doesn’t take me too much longer to move on from planning to actually doing…

Watch this space!

Lucky

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Every now and then I realise just how lucky I am to be enjoying my days as much as I do. I’ll be honest: I’m poorer than I’ve ever been. But I can’t really complain because the work I’m doing is something I enjoy, and, more than that, I feel like it means something.

On top of that, because I do most of my work in the mornings and evenings, my days are slow, and usually see me pottering about the house cooking, writing, reading, researching.

Don’t get me wrong; I have regular moments of overwhelming fear or upset, when I wonder what on earth I’ve done (or how I’ll next pay rent). But when I find myself sitting down to a piece of toast and a cup of tea at four o’clock in the afternoon, or cooking myself a warm lunch, I can’t help but feel privileged to be able to live this way.

Today was one of those days. I had a productive day: I did a few loads of washing, I got my groceries done, I cleaned the bathroom, I cooked a couple of meals, I chatted to my brother on the phone for a couple of hours about life and thinking, and I did some yoga. Then it was dinner time. And now I’m doing some research for a class I’m teaching. My idea of a perfect Monday, really.

Follow your dreams, people. The obstacles along the way are well worth the struggle.

Anticipation

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This week, I’ve spent most of my days sitting in various libraries and cafes at ANU (Australian National University) in Canberra, writing madly, pretending I’m a student there. I haven’t managed to finish the essay I’m working on, but I’ve got a writer’s first draft (that is, not something I’d be comfortable having someone else read, but something that forms some kind of whole, and that I can continue to work on). This afternoon I lounged on the couch in my parents’ back room, reading one of the many books I’m trying to absorb as part of my research for this essay, and for the bigger project I’ve tentatively started work on.

I had a few moments today where I really felt excited about what I was doing. I could almost feel the cogs in my brain turning, working things out, and I thought, ‘This is why I do this.’

I need moments like this more often.