Cath Crowley's Blog, page 9

ah, first love. This is so great.

In that nothing night

In that nothing nightThe stars caught the busTo the other side of townTo go to the pubThe moon followedLike moons doBecause moons don't think much for themselvesThe owls went to an owl disco And let go with some really crazy owl movesThat involved some serious head spinningThe snicking crickets went bowlingAnd the grass sleptThe mice went off to the café around the corner that serves good cheeseThe beetles got tuxedoed up and went to play cardsAt the casino across townSo everything was very quietIn that nothing nightAndFor a whileThere was just the sound of Two people talking

drunk words and mini quiches

I snuck into the corner To eat the dictionaryWhile you were In the toiletBecause I'd only understoodEvery second word Of what you'd said And I wanted to understand it allIt took a lot of wine to get the thousand pages downAnd by then I was drunk and the pages didn't make sensePlus I didn't eat them in orderBut I kept going, eating the other books on the shelf (along with some mini quiches)I knew you liked WhitmanSo I ate Leaves of GrassI thought I might as well eat some pages of Frost and Carver and Woodrell while I was there. I had some Thurber and some CheeverI was licking Einstein off my lips when you finally came backBut you just wiped the black smudges of wordsAnd kept talking

A cool bag and a road trip

Forgot to mention that my mum made me this very cool bag to carry my books in. 






















I'm going to take it on a road trip tomorrow to see herI'm going to leave early before it's lightI'm going to play a CD that has some Suzanne Vega, Laura Veirs, Death Cab for Cutie, The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, Luscious Jackson, The Lemonheads and The Dandy Warhols on itI'm going to stop at a roadside stall that sells coffee and hot jam donutsI'm going to get to my mum and dad's in time for a cup of tea and breakfast in the garden

Hi there.So. Some things that I've been doing with my ti...

Hi there.

So. Some things that I've been doing with my time while I haven't been blogging.



Writing in Daylesford

The lake is very beautiful and I like this duck.





Reading...

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

Some very funny lines and it made me want to go out and buy a red notebook and write to a stranger













































Raymond Carver's "Chef's House"

James Thurber's  "The Wood Duck"Alan Rabinowitz's "Man and Beast"McSweeney's Thirty-Sixth Issue - full of great things and it's all in a human head box, which somehow makes it even more exciting.



Listening to...Laura Veirs Year of MeteorsBeautiful songs, a beautiful writer WritingThe Velvet Highway (or The Howling Boy haven't decided yet)

Seeing some films in 3D and listening to some records

Hi there.So. Some things that I've been doing with my tim...

Hi there.
So. Some things that I've been doing with my time while I haven't been blogging.

Writing in Daylesford
The lake is very beautiful and I like this duck.


Reading...
Dash and Lily's Book of Dares
Some very funny lines and it made me want to go out and buy a red notebook and write to a stranger






















Raymond Carver's "Chef's House"
James Thurber's  "The Wood Duck"Alan Rabinowitz's "Man and Beast"McSweeney's Thirty-Sixth Issue - full of great things and it's all in a human head box, which somehow makes it even more exciting.

Listening to...Laura Veirs Year of MeteorsBeautiful songs, a beautiful writer WritingThe Velvet Highway (or The Howling Boy haven't decided yet)
Seeing some films in 3D and listening to some records

This week

I've been
finishing an edit on Graffiti Moon.
riding my new shiny bicycle.
reading some books.

New Year Lists

My list is so late it's already 2011 but I'm making it anyway. These are some things that I loved last year. Not all of the things happened or were published in 2010. But that's when I found them.


My favourite... 


short story 
Thanks to Emma who told me about it. It's by Karen Russell and here she reads the short story from Children's Reminiscences of the Westward Migration.

I also loved Emma Schwarcz's story, Harry. You can find it in New Australian Stories 2, edited by Aviva Tuffield and published by Scribe. Any of the stories told on This American Life. In particular Darin Strauss' account found in 359: LIFE AFTER DEATH ACT ONE: GUILTY AS NOT CHARGED. My favourite word

books
Six Impossible Things (Fiona Wood)
Everything Beautiful (Simmone Howell)
Little Paradise (Gabrielle Wang)
Winter's Bone (Daniel Woodrell)
Five Parts Dead (Tim Pegler)
Paper Towns (John Green)
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (David Levithan/John Green)
The Sky is Everywhere (Jandy Nelson)
Speak and Wintergirls (Laurie Halse Anderson)

podcasts and radio programs
This American Life especially 409 Held Hostage and the list of fears made by Michael Bernard Loggins read here in 234 Say Anything. Act One is beautiful and so sad too. 
The Moth podcast (everything I listen to here I love)

things that happened
My friend rescued kittens from her walls and her ceiling fan
My mum gave me her eight-gear shiny blue bike and soon I will be riding again

glass artist
Dale Chihuly

there are other things for my list but that's it for now.

Bird

So it has been quite a while.

Mainly because I'm writing my novel at the same as I'm editing another one. But I'm still doing writing warm ups so I thought I'd post one of those today. I started with a noun - after reading Simmone Howell's post on Ray Bradbury (thanks Simmone and Ray Bradbury) - and then I wrote.


BirdThere are birds outside my window. They have the tone of crickets. Like maybe they're imitating them, taunting them with a constant imitation of their high pitch squeak. This is who you are. Hear what you will never be.              But the crickets know better.             They're sleeping now and when they wake it will be night. In that night they will sing their song, nothing like the birds' imitations because it's natural. Because it's woven around the things it should be. People walking home from work, shirts yellow around the cuff and collar, stockings sagging in the wishbone of their legs, sighing shoes on the sidewalks.            'The end is what the day is all about,' one of these men says, walking as though there is a blister on his heel. 'This light. The thought that something is about to happen.'             The crickets know about darkness. That when people are dreaming and dying and loving and wanting and hurting and cooking steaks and letting the light from the television marble their faces, that they need a song. If there's no song in the darkness then there's only darkness. That's what the crickets know that the birds, with all their daylight mocking, don't. 

One for Sorrow, Two for Mirth

One for Sorrow, Two for Mirth


Last night I had the absolute pleasure of attending the launch of One for Sorrow, Two for Mirth, Presentation College Windsor's 2010 writing anthology. 
Lia Hills (The Beginner's Guide to Living, The possibility of Flight) and I were lucky enough to work with the students for a week earlier in the year. They took chances with their writing, they  talked about words and ideas, they were willing to consider life from another person's perspective. They were entertaining. And they wrote beautiful things. Hard to ask for more in a workshop group, really. It's really not surprising that this anthology is such a great read. 
Last night it was clear that the creative process, started months ago, had continued during the year.  The English teachers at PCW are a hard working and talented group and the school obviously values the arts, which, not surprisingly, makes me like them a lot. 
It's a gorgeous anthology. Like all good writers, the contributors to this publication spin us around, forcing us to explore what is to be human, sometimes by writing about what it's like to not be human. They write about love and hope. And the absence of these things. 
A big congratulations to all involved.