Gillian Polack's Blog, page 112
June 13, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-06-14T00:33:00
Just as well my class was wonderful yesterday, for I had three bits of bad news. I wanted to sulk (for I'm really very tired of all this work and no breaks) when I got one bit of very good news. My graduation date has been set.
On 22 July I become a timelord.
On 22 July I become a timelord.
gillpolack @ 2013-06-13T22:11:00
I'm waring bright blue leggings to class next Thursday. I need to remember this. I ran out of teaching slacks due to so many things this week and to the amazing drenching my last pair got yesterday. I chose the slinky black dress pants instead of the maroon (which are big on me - they fitted two months ago - I'm hoping this is genuine weight loss) or instead of leggings. I explained the slinky pants to my students and they were disappointed I hadn't chosen bright blue leggings. So I promised, next week.
Next week is topics by request and they're interesting. One topic isn't Medieval and one has not much to do with places. I added pilgrimage and a couple of other topics to the mix and our last class is all planned.
It'll be the end of a very nice course with an entirely charming class.
Next week is topics by request and they're interesting. One topic isn't Medieval and one has not much to do with places. I added pilgrimage and a couple of other topics to the mix and our last class is all planned.
It'll be the end of a very nice course with an entirely charming class.
June 12, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-06-13T15:11:00
Today I'm paying for the early part of the week. I'm still working, for it's that time of year: I don't get time out for a few days yet. If all this resolves Shroedinger's Gillian, it will be worth it. If it doesn't, I shall eat chocolate or, better still, bake a cake. I have some seventeenth century French recipes that need to be tested.
My book for the day balances the John Dee one. It's by Paul K Monod and is Solomon's Secret Arts. The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (Yale University Press, 2013). I want to make a bad joke and call it New History, but (technically speaking) New History is something else entirely. Remember that I wanted to make that joke, for I have a whole different joke that I will make in a few minutes, I think, just because I can. Or maybe it's because blogged reviews don't always have to be formal or serious and today I am neither.
Where I'm coming from with this review is partly me-as-historian. I'm interested in this book for its contribution to our understanding of the subject. I'm also looking at it from how writers devise universes. This kind of approach to history is manna for writers. I will be writing a bit of a book to show why, but no time to write that bit yet, so I'm using my review books to do some of the thinking, which means you get a glimpse of my thinking today.
Monod's explanations are occasionally clunky, but his book is good at pulling together the strands of understanding that have been kept away from each other by many earlier scholars. He points out the difference between modern interpretations of alchemy (all those associations with the Middle Ages that annoy me) and the actual peak of alchemical writings (c 1700). His considered definition of 'occult' is clunky, but the way he enthusiastically embraces Richard Kieckhefer's concept of magic as a crossroads and uses it to explain dynamic and complex cultural constructs from a later period makes me very happy. Simple concepts are gorgeous, but they're seldom good expressions of social phenomena and explorations by blokes (alas, mostly blokes in Monod's study) over long periods of time. Kieckhefer's strength in his analysis of magic was in finding a definition that can help us understand where complexities enter and why: Monod using Kieckhefer means that he, too, is alert to the reality of ideas and doesn't just stick to a nice and perfectly-structured theory.
To get the most out of Monod's book, it helps to have an understanding of the main figures of intellectual history from the Enlightenment. You don't have to have read them (but you should, because they're seriously cool) but Monod doesn't always explain their importance or what else they might have written, so, if you want to get the most out of Solomon's Secret Arts, it helps to know just a little about people like Marsilio Ficino and Elias Ashmole, for they're part of Monod's background to explaining Newton and his ilk.
It's a bird's eye approach, reshaping the period so that we can see it better. It fills some of the holes in our understanding of important paths from thought from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. It's missing some of my personal favourite scholars (I do not know why I have a thing for Jean Bodin, but I have a thing for Jean Bodin, just as I don't know why he wasn't name-checked), but that's from the period before the study proper begins. Monod, thankfully, avoids the error of pretending that the earlier period is strange and unknowable: he accepts and presents a dynamic past, where connections over place and time are important.
What is most important about Solomon's Secret Arts is that it questions popular belief that we moved from a superstitious past to an intellectually pristine present, and that this 'present' started with the Enlightenment. Many historians have been examining the rather more complex reality for a while.* Rational thought did not emerge, like a Greek goddess, fully formed,** and it has never been free of the other currents of thought in Western society. It was fashionable for a long while, however, not to address those other currents and certainly not to develop a solid understanding of what they mean. Monod's work is part of this new understanding. The reason I wanted to call this New History (when it's not) is because one of the people this work helps explain is Vico and his New Science. Because Monod's focus is on the occult, Vico isn't directly explained. He is not, in fact, even in the index. But the relationship Monod establishes between key thinkers and their worlds helps us interpret the relationships between other key thinkers and their worlds.
Monod emphasizes from the beginning that thought was not monolithic. This is, in fact, terribly important. There was not way way of thinking in the Age of Enlightenment, there were many. Some thought reflected older ideas and currents, and some was new. Some would make modern rationalists
proud and some would make them very scared. The first step of understanding is to accept complexity and to accept that ideas don't all have to be in accord.
Monod's occult is not the occult of modern popular ideas. It's not even the occult of Solomon's Key.*** It's the occult defined and investigated and pondered over by certain people over time. Monod shows us the dynamic of culture though this, and the changes in belief and how those changes rippled into the external world.
My writer friends need to read this book, for one of the ripples ought to be the way we write fiction about such things. One of the issues I've been having recently with historical fantasy is that ideas often come form a single base. A whole city might believe in exactly the same notion from exactly the same direction. I'm not sure this is ever true, and works like Monod's help me demonstrate why. Ask me about it sometime. Or read Monod and question his book directly. It's much easier to write characters if they don't all have precisely the same world constructs, and works like Monod's give tools for understanding, that, in reality, people don't tend to have precisely the same world constructs.
*which is where my interest in this book came from, for I think I might be writing a future novel set in this period, simply to examine the complex reality - I was thinking seventeenth century Paris, but will take opinions on time and place
** I can't think of any Greek gods that emerged fully formed. Help me, someone!
*** 2 1/2 jokes and 3 footnotes. Coffee is my new best friend.
My book for the day balances the John Dee one. It's by Paul K Monod and is Solomon's Secret Arts. The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (Yale University Press, 2013). I want to make a bad joke and call it New History, but (technically speaking) New History is something else entirely. Remember that I wanted to make that joke, for I have a whole different joke that I will make in a few minutes, I think, just because I can. Or maybe it's because blogged reviews don't always have to be formal or serious and today I am neither.
Where I'm coming from with this review is partly me-as-historian. I'm interested in this book for its contribution to our understanding of the subject. I'm also looking at it from how writers devise universes. This kind of approach to history is manna for writers. I will be writing a bit of a book to show why, but no time to write that bit yet, so I'm using my review books to do some of the thinking, which means you get a glimpse of my thinking today.
Monod's explanations are occasionally clunky, but his book is good at pulling together the strands of understanding that have been kept away from each other by many earlier scholars. He points out the difference between modern interpretations of alchemy (all those associations with the Middle Ages that annoy me) and the actual peak of alchemical writings (c 1700). His considered definition of 'occult' is clunky, but the way he enthusiastically embraces Richard Kieckhefer's concept of magic as a crossroads and uses it to explain dynamic and complex cultural constructs from a later period makes me very happy. Simple concepts are gorgeous, but they're seldom good expressions of social phenomena and explorations by blokes (alas, mostly blokes in Monod's study) over long periods of time. Kieckhefer's strength in his analysis of magic was in finding a definition that can help us understand where complexities enter and why: Monod using Kieckhefer means that he, too, is alert to the reality of ideas and doesn't just stick to a nice and perfectly-structured theory.
To get the most out of Monod's book, it helps to have an understanding of the main figures of intellectual history from the Enlightenment. You don't have to have read them (but you should, because they're seriously cool) but Monod doesn't always explain their importance or what else they might have written, so, if you want to get the most out of Solomon's Secret Arts, it helps to know just a little about people like Marsilio Ficino and Elias Ashmole, for they're part of Monod's background to explaining Newton and his ilk.
It's a bird's eye approach, reshaping the period so that we can see it better. It fills some of the holes in our understanding of important paths from thought from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. It's missing some of my personal favourite scholars (I do not know why I have a thing for Jean Bodin, but I have a thing for Jean Bodin, just as I don't know why he wasn't name-checked), but that's from the period before the study proper begins. Monod, thankfully, avoids the error of pretending that the earlier period is strange and unknowable: he accepts and presents a dynamic past, where connections over place and time are important.
What is most important about Solomon's Secret Arts is that it questions popular belief that we moved from a superstitious past to an intellectually pristine present, and that this 'present' started with the Enlightenment. Many historians have been examining the rather more complex reality for a while.* Rational thought did not emerge, like a Greek goddess, fully formed,** and it has never been free of the other currents of thought in Western society. It was fashionable for a long while, however, not to address those other currents and certainly not to develop a solid understanding of what they mean. Monod's work is part of this new understanding. The reason I wanted to call this New History (when it's not) is because one of the people this work helps explain is Vico and his New Science. Because Monod's focus is on the occult, Vico isn't directly explained. He is not, in fact, even in the index. But the relationship Monod establishes between key thinkers and their worlds helps us interpret the relationships between other key thinkers and their worlds.
Monod emphasizes from the beginning that thought was not monolithic. This is, in fact, terribly important. There was not way way of thinking in the Age of Enlightenment, there were many. Some thought reflected older ideas and currents, and some was new. Some would make modern rationalists
proud and some would make them very scared. The first step of understanding is to accept complexity and to accept that ideas don't all have to be in accord.
Monod's occult is not the occult of modern popular ideas. It's not even the occult of Solomon's Key.*** It's the occult defined and investigated and pondered over by certain people over time. Monod shows us the dynamic of culture though this, and the changes in belief and how those changes rippled into the external world.
My writer friends need to read this book, for one of the ripples ought to be the way we write fiction about such things. One of the issues I've been having recently with historical fantasy is that ideas often come form a single base. A whole city might believe in exactly the same notion from exactly the same direction. I'm not sure this is ever true, and works like Monod's help me demonstrate why. Ask me about it sometime. Or read Monod and question his book directly. It's much easier to write characters if they don't all have precisely the same world constructs, and works like Monod's give tools for understanding, that, in reality, people don't tend to have precisely the same world constructs.
*which is where my interest in this book came from, for I think I might be writing a future novel set in this period, simply to examine the complex reality - I was thinking seventeenth century Paris, but will take opinions on time and place
** I can't think of any Greek gods that emerged fully formed. Help me, someone!
*** 2 1/2 jokes and 3 footnotes. Coffee is my new best friend.
June 11, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-06-12T08:29:00
This is another in-between moment. I have ten minutes, unexpectedly. If I had expected the minutes, I would have slept a bit longer - 2 hours sleep is just not sufficient.
I'm through the hard work aspect of my very long day. I've only got about 7 hours before I can take a nap. It amuses me that I'm counting down to a nap when, really, it's going to be a good morning. Breakfast with friends (not a long breakfast, but still, with friends), teaching my favourite class, lunch with a friend. After that, I've got a whole bag full of messages. I have to prove my identity to a government body, and go to the chemist, and the library and... I forget the rest. It's all in my extra bag (with notes). When my bag is empty except for library materials, I'll know I'm done.
Today has a lot of people in it, when I stop and think, for tonight is all about the Beast. I was going to say "Tonight is a Beastly night" except working on the Beast is fun. It'd be even more fun right now if there was more agreement on the nature of Medieval furniture. Katrin and I are discovering so much more than I knew on ways in which limited evidence can provide information that's just impossibly unreliable for writers. The both of us could write an article on it, if the occasion arose, "How limited material evidence deceives even careful fiction writers." Thinking about this, I'd better make a note to myself. I'd better explore exactly how writers use that limited evidence in the work I'll be doing after the Beast. It's not the limited evidence that deceives them, but how it's interpreted by experts, and Medieval furniture has only a few solid sources that writers use and re-use. It's a lovely example of something I was going to talk about anyhow.
And I need to wait outside, for any minute I get to see friends!
I'm through the hard work aspect of my very long day. I've only got about 7 hours before I can take a nap. It amuses me that I'm counting down to a nap when, really, it's going to be a good morning. Breakfast with friends (not a long breakfast, but still, with friends), teaching my favourite class, lunch with a friend. After that, I've got a whole bag full of messages. I have to prove my identity to a government body, and go to the chemist, and the library and... I forget the rest. It's all in my extra bag (with notes). When my bag is empty except for library materials, I'll know I'm done.
Today has a lot of people in it, when I stop and think, for tonight is all about the Beast. I was going to say "Tonight is a Beastly night" except working on the Beast is fun. It'd be even more fun right now if there was more agreement on the nature of Medieval furniture. Katrin and I are discovering so much more than I knew on ways in which limited evidence can provide information that's just impossibly unreliable for writers. The both of us could write an article on it, if the occasion arose, "How limited material evidence deceives even careful fiction writers." Thinking about this, I'd better make a note to myself. I'd better explore exactly how writers use that limited evidence in the work I'll be doing after the Beast. It's not the limited evidence that deceives them, but how it's interpreted by experts, and Medieval furniture has only a few solid sources that writers use and re-use. It's a lovely example of something I was going to talk about anyhow.
And I need to wait outside, for any minute I get to see friends!
gillpolack @ 2013-06-11T17:06:00
I'm having an in-between moment. I ought to be putting my next lot of recycling out, but I have messages to run and a meeting to go to in fifteen minutes (not a meeting I really want to go to, but it's essential I be there) and I thought, "What should I do?" I looked at the current state of my flat and I thought "I'm going to ignore this? I need an in-between moment." So this is it.
Everything's beginning to look exceptionally messy rather than almost disastrous, but I'll be happy when the postcards are gone, and when today's stuff for people is gone and tomorrow's stuff for people is gone. I'll be happier when I can start in on the normal to-do list and clear that.
I don't know how it is that one can get rid of so much paper and clear so much space and then it all fills up again. I know, in my hearts of hearts, I have a lot less possessions, but it really, really doesn't show yet. I got rid of five boxes worth of things this week (not counting the postcards) and three big bags to the opp shop. And yet my place still looks as if I am spawning tiny whirlwinds in my wake. How can 75 square metres hold so very much?
Life is a mystery. And I've come to an end of my in-between moment and must find things for my 5.30 meeting and must run those messages.
Everything's beginning to look exceptionally messy rather than almost disastrous, but I'll be happy when the postcards are gone, and when today's stuff for people is gone and tomorrow's stuff for people is gone. I'll be happier when I can start in on the normal to-do list and clear that.
I don't know how it is that one can get rid of so much paper and clear so much space and then it all fills up again. I know, in my hearts of hearts, I have a lot less possessions, but it really, really doesn't show yet. I got rid of five boxes worth of things this week (not counting the postcards) and three big bags to the opp shop. And yet my place still looks as if I am spawning tiny whirlwinds in my wake. How can 75 square metres hold so very much?
Life is a mystery. And I've come to an end of my in-between moment and must find things for my 5.30 meeting and must run those messages.
June 10, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-06-10T17:44:00
So much to do! So little time! I think this will be the motto of my 2013.
The good news is that the new volume of WisCon Chronicles has been released.
The other good news is that I've sorted more paper (I said I wouldn't, but then I got all kinds of jumpy, so I did).
The other, other good news is that the processing of my PhD examiners' reports and etc is all done and I just have to get a letter in the mail, have that letter processed and I will graduate. This makes my graduation somewhere between next week and September, as I read it. I'm down on the university website as a graduate already, however, and it was a change in my status there that led to me investigating and finding out I can apply for the ceremony (or, in this case, for graduation in absentia). Perth is so far from Canberra that the letter telling me all this is still in the mail...
This means that tomorrow (when I post that letter, and spend my time from 5.25 pm until about 2 am in various meetings and things) is officially the day my life could change. Or, as I keep reminding myself, it could all fizzle out. I don't want it to fizzle out. I'm all dynamised and excited and want the changes. I'm not someone who really likes change, normally, but for some reason I've got an inner drive for this. That 'some reason' might be because I know what I want to do with the rest of my life and I know I will enjoy it and the various things lined up tomorrow could make it happen earlier... or I might have to delay it if they don't work so well. Delays will mean physical discomfort (because of the first meting tomorrow, which concerns my flat) as well as emotional, so, just this once, I want things to be wildly good. The knowledge that the final of the PhD has been properly accepted is a very nice start, actually. And that I have an interesting publication to my credit.
The good news is that the new volume of WisCon Chronicles has been released.
The other good news is that I've sorted more paper (I said I wouldn't, but then I got all kinds of jumpy, so I did).
The other, other good news is that the processing of my PhD examiners' reports and etc is all done and I just have to get a letter in the mail, have that letter processed and I will graduate. This makes my graduation somewhere between next week and September, as I read it. I'm down on the university website as a graduate already, however, and it was a change in my status there that led to me investigating and finding out I can apply for the ceremony (or, in this case, for graduation in absentia). Perth is so far from Canberra that the letter telling me all this is still in the mail...
This means that tomorrow (when I post that letter, and spend my time from 5.25 pm until about 2 am in various meetings and things) is officially the day my life could change. Or, as I keep reminding myself, it could all fizzle out. I don't want it to fizzle out. I'm all dynamised and excited and want the changes. I'm not someone who really likes change, normally, but for some reason I've got an inner drive for this. That 'some reason' might be because I know what I want to do with the rest of my life and I know I will enjoy it and the various things lined up tomorrow could make it happen earlier... or I might have to delay it if they don't work so well. Delays will mean physical discomfort (because of the first meting tomorrow, which concerns my flat) as well as emotional, so, just this once, I want things to be wildly good. The knowledge that the final of the PhD has been properly accepted is a very nice start, actually. And that I have an interesting publication to my credit.
June 8, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-06-09T13:27:00
I've done the worst of the Big Tidy and I've run out of space to do any more. I've also run out of archive boxes. I now have four normal archive boxes full of stuff and one small one. I have about the same again to go into recycling, and I've got some material that I need to check through before recycling or rehousing. When all the various finished papers are dealt with, I'll have about 2 hours more work and then all will be done.
How did I do it all so quickly? I'm so glad you asked. Before I became ill, I was very organised (just as I'm getting organised again, now that I have normal capacities) and all my correspondence to about my 30th birthday was neatly filed already. I had scrapbooks and folders and all sorts of things, covering large chunks of life. I weeded out the women's material from this (except I think I left personal letters behind, for me to keep - I must let L know I've done that, in case she needs to access them for her research) and lo, it was done. I refrained from reading my high school projects, or even my father's high school books (of which I have two!) and I put aside some notes for thinking and discussing (one whole box I need to talk about with K, for they're from an earlier manifestation of the Beast) but that's whole boxes, already about the one subject.
I'll take a break from sorting until the end of the week. I don't have to have it finished until a week today, and that gives me lots of time to do other work. It also gives all of you a break from these reports.
For my next trick, I will extricate books from underneath the stacks and I shall write about them and then put them away. But first, I think, a big cuppa.
How did I do it all so quickly? I'm so glad you asked. Before I became ill, I was very organised (just as I'm getting organised again, now that I have normal capacities) and all my correspondence to about my 30th birthday was neatly filed already. I had scrapbooks and folders and all sorts of things, covering large chunks of life. I weeded out the women's material from this (except I think I left personal letters behind, for me to keep - I must let L know I've done that, in case she needs to access them for her research) and lo, it was done. I refrained from reading my high school projects, or even my father's high school books (of which I have two!) and I put aside some notes for thinking and discussing (one whole box I need to talk about with K, for they're from an earlier manifestation of the Beast) but that's whole boxes, already about the one subject.
I'll take a break from sorting until the end of the week. I don't have to have it finished until a week today, and that gives me lots of time to do other work. It also gives all of you a break from these reports.
For my next trick, I will extricate books from underneath the stacks and I shall write about them and then put them away. But first, I think, a big cuppa.
June 7, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-06-08T16:48:00
Three boxes of correspondence have diminished to one box, which is good. I'm using one of the liberated boxes to bring together all my school reports and magazines (where I have them). It's illuminating.
I had a reading age of 14 when I was 7, but I got B for English at primary school (and I found the story I wrote the year I informed myself I was going to be a writer!). I was doing Form Four maths in sixth grade but, again, I got a B. No wonder I didn't push myself. I did better at high school, but only started really showing my colours from second year university.
This is terribly important in explaining that lack of self-confidence that follows me round. Until I was a teenager everyone told me "You're bright, but everyone else is brighter." I still keep expecting everyone else to be brighter. This is really good for the teaching side of me, for people actually bring out their more intelligent selves in my class, time after time. It's not so good in other ways.
I have to admit, I'll be glad when I finish with these records.
I had a reading age of 14 when I was 7, but I got B for English at primary school (and I found the story I wrote the year I informed myself I was going to be a writer!). I was doing Form Four maths in sixth grade but, again, I got a B. No wonder I didn't push myself. I did better at high school, but only started really showing my colours from second year university.
This is terribly important in explaining that lack of self-confidence that follows me round. Until I was a teenager everyone told me "You're bright, but everyone else is brighter." I still keep expecting everyone else to be brighter. This is really good for the teaching side of me, for people actually bring out their more intelligent selves in my class, time after time. It's not so good in other ways.
I have to admit, I'll be glad when I finish with these records.
gillpolack @ 2013-06-08T11:31:00
My morning's sorting is differently enlightening to last night's. When my father died, my mother gave me my old correspondence (me with green pen! I used that pen, it seems for about six years) and my sisters also gave me some of my old letters at one stage.
Some things I like about my younger self. I kept such a careful accounting of money I was lent when in desperate straits, for instance, and I paid it all back before I allowed myself luxuries. And I planned for other people's needs whenever I travelled, even when I was 21. I like both these things about my younger self.
What I dislike about my younger self is her insecurity. It's a strange thing, but the insecurity was expressed through describing people after someone else's style. This means that some of my discussion of folks around me had that slightly disparaging tone my grandmother used to use. It also meant the letter I wrote from Girl Guide camp sounded like my tent companions rather than like me. It's as if there was a barely-visible Gillian back then, buried by all the people I was trying to please. One of the really interesting elements of my writing voice developing is that it's given me myself, not my grandmother or my sister or my tentmates.
Some things I like about my younger self. I kept such a careful accounting of money I was lent when in desperate straits, for instance, and I paid it all back before I allowed myself luxuries. And I planned for other people's needs whenever I travelled, even when I was 21. I like both these things about my younger self.
What I dislike about my younger self is her insecurity. It's a strange thing, but the insecurity was expressed through describing people after someone else's style. This means that some of my discussion of folks around me had that slightly disparaging tone my grandmother used to use. It also meant the letter I wrote from Girl Guide camp sounded like my tent companions rather than like me. It's as if there was a barely-visible Gillian back then, buried by all the people I was trying to please. One of the really interesting elements of my writing voice developing is that it's given me myself, not my grandmother or my sister or my tentmates.
gillpolack @ 2013-06-08T00:54:00
I am not the person I thought I was. I may be, however, the person someone else thought I was.
I've spent the last two hours sorting old letters. I was mainly getting rid of the women's stuff from among them, but a few pieces of random officaldom have been thrown out. I needed most of the letters, though, for so many of my friends over the years have been letter writers.
None of us are, any more, because of the 'net, and so we lose touch because we're out of the habit of answering mail. I used to write twenty letters a week! Then I developed CFS and could only send a very few letters a week, so I'd catch up with one big letter (typed) to all kinds of people once a year. The Melrose Muse, I'd call it. And so it dwindled. Some of my friends were disappointed by the newsletters, even though I put personal notes on each, and I don't blame them. Regular correspondence is a treasure, as I discovered tonight.
It would make me very happy to see all these friends again. Often. I miss them. I always miss them, to be honest, but I miss them particularly now. Letters turn the past into the present: they're a gift.
I put aside a few of the letters to report on, for they're very special, each for different reasons.
The first brought me to tears. I had forgotten that Paul wrote me a letter when I left Melbourne. His mother was one of my mother's close friends, and Paul had emphysema and so we lost him far too early. And yet here he is, talking to me, reminding me that I had persuaded him to listen to Pachelbel's Canon in D (we'd been talking about the Streets of London - and this shows just how old my joke about them being the same tune is - my family made that joke for years before I ever knew Paul) and letting me know he'd got engaged. I don't think I ever met Carol, which is a shame, because Paul was wry and funny and terribly cluey and anyone he married would be worth knowing. Three decades later, I still miss him a great deal.
My next letter is earlier. I was thirteen (or thereabouts). I'd become rather angry about proposed road closures and had written a letter to the local council, in green biro, in big handwriting covering many pages, analysing the effects of the proposed closures. This letter caused a bit of a stir (it must have been the green biro) and I was in the paper, looking very self-conscious. My letter tonight was just a form letter (the council itself didn't answer teenage girls) saying "OK, we give up. No closures."
The third letter is from the director of the college I lived in for most of my first PhD. It's annotated with an apology. I was coming back to Sydney after a year in Toronto and he had wanted to send me a card saying "All is forgiven please come home." Alas, he had none and had to annotate a form letter, instead. This goes with a note from his deputy, from February 1983: I was asked to drop into his office to discuss catering from some sort of conference. I didn't do the catering, but even then I was a handy person for devising achievable menus that met everyone's dietary restrictions and were not impossibly expensive or hard to prepare. Those Conflux banquets were probably inevitable.
The next letter is from 1981. My first short story competition (in my second, I won a rather nice prize, but this one, nothing) and the judge wrote me a letter saying "I didn't write to anyone else, but I wanted to tell you that you really ought to keep writing." I forgot the letter until now, to be honest, but I didn't forget the advice. Even when I thought I was a complete failure at fiction, I kept writing. And, for the record, the story in question was accepted by the first editor I sent it to and it became my first paid publication. It was also my first spec fic story, and heavily influenced by my abiding love for the work of Marcel Ayme.
The second last letter is from my Honours year. We were supposed to interview people who were active in the Peace Movement in the 1950s, as part of our training in oral history. R Douglas Wright (informally known as "Pansy" but to me he was Professor Wright) wrote to me directly saying he wasn't involved. He then explained "I have often been sympathetic with the aims, especially over Vietnam but not always sanguine about getting anywhere." As the archival part of the course, I was cataloguing newspaper clippings about Melbourne University's involvement in the Peace Movement. He was not an activist in his own mind, but he certainly was listed as one by the newspapers of the time.
And finally, is a letter I shan't quote, but I shall cry over again. It's from one of the toughest of my undergraduate teachers and it says some very nice things. Also some very surprising things. I think I need to keep this one out, to remind me that I'm heading in the right direction now and that I just need to stick with it, even if openings don't happen as quickly as I'd like, and even if life becomes difficult. I gave up so much after that first PhD, because jobs were hard to find and my self-esteem was even harder to find.
I didn't waste the intervening years. I have some extraordinarily useful skills and a treasure chest of experience, but what I've always wanted to do is research and write and teach. Culican's letter reminds me that I started off able to do all three, and that I was good at the admin side, even as an undergraduate. I need to remember this and to get it right this time. In this new world, there are jobs that will allow me both the fiction and the scholarly sides of myself. All I need to do is give myself permission to be the person Bill Culican saw, all those years ago.
PS I found my Peter Hudson postcard (signed). What on earth do I do with it? It's from 1968 or 1969, I think.
I've spent the last two hours sorting old letters. I was mainly getting rid of the women's stuff from among them, but a few pieces of random officaldom have been thrown out. I needed most of the letters, though, for so many of my friends over the years have been letter writers.
None of us are, any more, because of the 'net, and so we lose touch because we're out of the habit of answering mail. I used to write twenty letters a week! Then I developed CFS and could only send a very few letters a week, so I'd catch up with one big letter (typed) to all kinds of people once a year. The Melrose Muse, I'd call it. And so it dwindled. Some of my friends were disappointed by the newsletters, even though I put personal notes on each, and I don't blame them. Regular correspondence is a treasure, as I discovered tonight.
It would make me very happy to see all these friends again. Often. I miss them. I always miss them, to be honest, but I miss them particularly now. Letters turn the past into the present: they're a gift.
I put aside a few of the letters to report on, for they're very special, each for different reasons.
The first brought me to tears. I had forgotten that Paul wrote me a letter when I left Melbourne. His mother was one of my mother's close friends, and Paul had emphysema and so we lost him far too early. And yet here he is, talking to me, reminding me that I had persuaded him to listen to Pachelbel's Canon in D (we'd been talking about the Streets of London - and this shows just how old my joke about them being the same tune is - my family made that joke for years before I ever knew Paul) and letting me know he'd got engaged. I don't think I ever met Carol, which is a shame, because Paul was wry and funny and terribly cluey and anyone he married would be worth knowing. Three decades later, I still miss him a great deal.
My next letter is earlier. I was thirteen (or thereabouts). I'd become rather angry about proposed road closures and had written a letter to the local council, in green biro, in big handwriting covering many pages, analysing the effects of the proposed closures. This letter caused a bit of a stir (it must have been the green biro) and I was in the paper, looking very self-conscious. My letter tonight was just a form letter (the council itself didn't answer teenage girls) saying "OK, we give up. No closures."
The third letter is from the director of the college I lived in for most of my first PhD. It's annotated with an apology. I was coming back to Sydney after a year in Toronto and he had wanted to send me a card saying "All is forgiven please come home." Alas, he had none and had to annotate a form letter, instead. This goes with a note from his deputy, from February 1983: I was asked to drop into his office to discuss catering from some sort of conference. I didn't do the catering, but even then I was a handy person for devising achievable menus that met everyone's dietary restrictions and were not impossibly expensive or hard to prepare. Those Conflux banquets were probably inevitable.
The next letter is from 1981. My first short story competition (in my second, I won a rather nice prize, but this one, nothing) and the judge wrote me a letter saying "I didn't write to anyone else, but I wanted to tell you that you really ought to keep writing." I forgot the letter until now, to be honest, but I didn't forget the advice. Even when I thought I was a complete failure at fiction, I kept writing. And, for the record, the story in question was accepted by the first editor I sent it to and it became my first paid publication. It was also my first spec fic story, and heavily influenced by my abiding love for the work of Marcel Ayme.
The second last letter is from my Honours year. We were supposed to interview people who were active in the Peace Movement in the 1950s, as part of our training in oral history. R Douglas Wright (informally known as "Pansy" but to me he was Professor Wright) wrote to me directly saying he wasn't involved. He then explained "I have often been sympathetic with the aims, especially over Vietnam but not always sanguine about getting anywhere." As the archival part of the course, I was cataloguing newspaper clippings about Melbourne University's involvement in the Peace Movement. He was not an activist in his own mind, but he certainly was listed as one by the newspapers of the time.
And finally, is a letter I shan't quote, but I shall cry over again. It's from one of the toughest of my undergraduate teachers and it says some very nice things. Also some very surprising things. I think I need to keep this one out, to remind me that I'm heading in the right direction now and that I just need to stick with it, even if openings don't happen as quickly as I'd like, and even if life becomes difficult. I gave up so much after that first PhD, because jobs were hard to find and my self-esteem was even harder to find.
I didn't waste the intervening years. I have some extraordinarily useful skills and a treasure chest of experience, but what I've always wanted to do is research and write and teach. Culican's letter reminds me that I started off able to do all three, and that I was good at the admin side, even as an undergraduate. I need to remember this and to get it right this time. In this new world, there are jobs that will allow me both the fiction and the scholarly sides of myself. All I need to do is give myself permission to be the person Bill Culican saw, all those years ago.
PS I found my Peter Hudson postcard (signed). What on earth do I do with it? It's from 1968 or 1969, I think.
