Iris Lavell's Blog, page 18

The Sinkings

The Sinkings – Amanda Curtin       Published 2008 University of Western Australia Press
Part One – declaration of my own subjectivity as a reader Sometimes I come to books late, and feel that in this, as well as in everything else in the Zeitgeist, I am somehow always lagging behind. As books are part of a marketplace, I get the feeling that with those written in recent years there is the implication of a use-by date.  If I stumble upon a book in a timely manner, great! But as a rule I’ve tended to be slow to read and slow to respond, and because of this I must resist the urge that tells me not to respond at all, because what I am saying might be construed as old news. I have to add that I am as interested in process as in product, and, for me, often the means is the end. Maybe process-driven, and result-driven, are different kinds of stories. For instance sometimes the plot-driven story takes precedence in a novel. Other times the story within the story is most important, and the plot is - what ? - the icing on the cake? Or the strawberry in the champagne - much less interesting devoid of the milieu in which it is soaking. That’s the sort of novel that particularly interests me – the one you have to dig for. What will remain six or twelve months down the track? That’s important in a book – that I can learn something new, or deepen my understanding of something old. I don't think that the success or otherwise of a story can always be measured in how quickly one reaches the end, or how contented or justified one feels, or even in whether one is able to lose oneself in the characters and love them, although this latter is always a beautiful feeling, and I suppose was what caused me to become a reader in the first place.

I wanted to preempt my ‘take’ on Amanda Curtin’s debut novel The Sinkings with this declaration–reviews inevitably involve a personal response to the work. Emotional connection is as important as intellectual connection in a novel, and our responses to the books we read are necessarily subjective and informed, and often challenged, by our own  dearly held beliefs and values. The other thing that might be worth stating is that I am responding to this book about six months after reading it. From an objective point of view this book is beautifully crafted. Just as importantly, six months after reading The Sinkings, it continues to hold a place in my heart. I am not sure why, but there it is. Part two – my take on the bookThe Sinkings is set in two time periods, the nineteenth century and in contemporary times. When the dismembered human remains of a murder victim are discovered at the Sinkings near Albany, Western Australia in 1882, they are initially believed to be those of a woman. Subsequently they are identified as those of Little Jock, a former convict. Willa Sampson is struggling with her own grief, and feelings of guilt associated with the loss of her child, who has gone away and ceased contact.  Her daughter Imogen was born with a mixed male and female chromosomal profile. Willa has been pressured by the well-intentioned medical personnel and her husband into making a quick decision with regard to her child’s gender identity, and into agreeing to surgery for the baby. This results in years of traumatising medical and surgical treatment, psychological distress, family and social distress, and in time, the departure of her adult child, and her husband. Willa, now living alone with her cat, becomes obsessed with researching Little Jock’s story, which she first came across in an article in Past Lives ‘A strange case of murder and mutilation’ by George Sullivan twelve years earlier. Now that her daughter is gone she pursues this research relentlessly, possibly in the hope that it will offer up some sort of clue or answer to her beloved daughter’s story. Unlike her own child, Jock was born in an era when such surgical options were unavailable, when social expectations were different and gender roles were apparently more clearly delineated. Thus we have the engine of the story, and the reason for the obsessive dedication with which Willa pursues Little Jock’s story as she traces the documented fragments of his life back to Scotland, and ultimately Ireland, in her quest to understand possible alternatives that might have been available for her own child. And this is where the real story lies – in the gaps where research ends and Willa’s interpretation and emotional investment takes hold. For one thing, the quest for understanding identity (her own, her child’s, Little Jock’s) is never complete, and the more she digs, and the more details are uncovered, the more complex (less clear and further away) the picture becomes. It is the problem of essentialism, in pursuing a definative answer in attempting to tie down social reality  – there is an infinitely retreating destination. The more closely one looks, the more layers one sees. Ultimately it seems that it is only love that can be the enduring facet of this story, the story through-line, and acceptance – or more than that – celebration, of the unique human life – her own, her child’s, and that of the incredible person who was (Willa's) Little Jock. Some novels carry a reader mostly along on the surface and give a great ride. I love novels like that. Others draw the reader in, and change something, although one is not always clear about what that is. I believe The Sinkings is one of those. I needed somewhere quiet to read this novel, to be absolutely alone with it. Once it caught me I couldn’t stop reading until the end. Then there was the inevitable feeling of loss when the book was finished. I think most readers understand what that is like. It is a breach that is not easily filled by just any other book.
 

BLPG group member profile - Jenni Ibrahim

As a child I was an avid reader and sometimes thought of becoming a writer. But I thought I would have nothing interesting to say because my life seemed uninteresting. My life was boring because it seemed to be happening in a similar way to many other people. So many other people – my sister, my brother, my parents, my school friends, our neighbours. Who would want to read about that? To become a writer I would need “real life experiences” and this assumption subconsciously drove me for much of my life. At 13 it never occurred to me that the others around me might experience things differently. In my mind I had no unique voice or story that could be of any consequence to anyone else.
As I grew older I became busier with the things that fill your life –study, social life, family life. Writing too, but rarely fiction. In fact I had sometimes struggled with the short creative essays required in lower secondary school. Then I veered into studying science and my creative self went on a very long holiday. My days were filled with lectures, assignments, lab work, swotting, and then the long task of writing a PhD thesis in psychology. The only fiction I wrote appeared in holiday job applications.
Then at last study was over. Work, marriage, motherhood and more work filled my days to overflowing. I now look back on a life far from ordinary. At 21 I was not going to marry someone from a grey Australian suburb, but instead settled on an ambitious, bright Malay man from a small green and brown village in Perak, Malaysia. The prospect excited me no end. A young man who laughed outwardly -and seethed inwardly - at the Australians he met who thought Asians lived in trees.

After five years together in Australia we moved to his country. I am emigrating, I reflected, as I boarded the plane one wintry Melbourne day. Forever was the deal. It didn’t bother me. In the 1960s and early 1970s politics in Australia stunk. Too many narrow-minded conservatives voting for narrow-minded conservative candidates. In spite of the big change of government in 1972 that had seemed impossible the previous year.

The irony of my views of Australia didn’t occur to me then. Not until well after I began a journey as a strongly opinionated woman settling into married life with a strongly opinionated local, his extended Muslim family and the wider Malaysian society - which was anything but simple or dull. Now I was the outsider and he was the insider. Language learning was a priority – oh, and how to peel tiny 2cm red onions, lots of them. I was not adjusting to the life of an expat, but learning how to assimilate into Malaysian life as a permanent resident.

After nearly two decades together, our marriage dissolved and I faced a task I had never expected. Assimilating into Australian life after a 10 year hiatus. I worked, I single-parented. Now that phase is over, I am ready to write but I’m very frightened. For I have had an interesting life. More than enough to inspire me to write. All I have to do is do it. And through the Book Length Project Group I find I'm not alone.

Good website and blog - Jennifer Crusie

Jennifer Crusie's website has a wealth of information for writers. I would highly recommended it. Take a look at this link. Jennifer Crusie is a best-selling romance fiction writer, with Masters degree in literary criticism, and an impressive range of essays on the practicalities of writing, publishing, agents, as well as essays that (for example) interrogate the assumptions that literary critics sometimes have of romance fiction.

Episode Two - my post-apocalytic story

 Two – Swing
It was between day and night, when colours glow. The surrounding forest was noisy with the broken-up arguments of pink and greys, birds with no interest in glowing colours, preferring to spend twilight squabbling over night perches. Ma stood with Dalyon looking up at the sky, trying to see the first star. 
‘Look at the clouds,’ she said, ‘how they are lit from underneath. I love that. When you see the first star you can make a wish.’
She began to sing a song he hadn’t heard before. 
‘When you see a falling star, catch it in a silver jar, and everything your heart would wish, will come to you.’
She said, ‘it’s a very old song Dalyon, very beautiful. My mother used to sing it to me, and her mother sang it to her. And her mother. Once people believed such things, and perhaps they were true. Do you think so?’
She put her hand to his chest. ‘Your heart is in here,’ she said.  ‘If you put your hand here you can feel it beating.  Pom-pom, pom-pom. When you feel a wish come into your heart, and you see that first star, the wish will come true. Here Dalyon, I’ll show you.’
Ma put his hand on his chest. Something was moving in there, living in him. This creature inside his chest might want different things from him, things he did not know.
‘Dalyon doesn’t want that wish,’ he said. ‘Go away heart!’
‘Why not? Why don’t you want that wish?’
Dalyon couldn’t say. He ran off to play on the swing until darkness fell. There was no trampoline then. 
Night came and they went inside to eat, wash, and move steadily towards bedtime. He arranged the toys, chose the purple alligator to hold through the night, saw pictures of children at bedtime. The bedtime children lived in two old story books that Ma had when she was a girl. She sang her songs – one about stars and another about the moon. Then her kiss, her disappearance. There would be the soft drift of sleep until morning, because tonight the moon was thin.
Sometimes when it was big, that restless moon woke him up, wanting to play. He would change what he did on those nights. He would go outside to fly his swing and sing for the moon. The cat would come and find him there. It would lie down to watch, just past the reach of his coming and going feet. The cat knew the right place to lie. The moon, the swing, Dalyon and the cat would all make a line. In the morning when the early sun woke him, he would be lying on the ground with the cat next to his head.
Ma would be asleep. He would go back to his bed until she came for him.  She would ask about the grass seeds in his hair and on his pillow. He would wonder about them too. She would brush them away. That was the way of things. All things in the universe had a natural swing and rhythm, back and forth, back and forth.
*
 
The sky was an even grey, the day that the black cockatoos appeared in the tree with the deep red feathery flowers that hung in cylinders above the clothesline. Ma came after they had landed, but she did not see them. She began to hang the faded clothes in tidy connected rows, clipping them together, not looking up far enough. She was looking at her feet and at the broken basket of bundled damp cloth when the first flower dropped.
Dalyon had seen them first. He sang to them in their language.
‘I wish I were a red-tailed black cockatoo,’ Dalyon’s song said. ‘I wish I were sitting on that branch of the red flower tree with a flock of friends and a heavy cracking beak chopping off the flowers one by one with one eye on her hanging out the washing. It’s fun to see how she jumps as the first flower falls and she looks up to see Dalyon eye to eye, hers all bare and glowing and Dalyon’s small, sharp and neat like a black beetle. This bird here is called Dalyon.’
Dalyon clicked off another flower, and another. Dalyon and the flock worked together dropping the red flowers at her feet. She stopped what she was doing and watched them. They stayed awhile for her. Together in the tree, Dalyon and the flock formed a large feathered cloud, a black thundercloud, mysterious and magician-magnificent. Dalyon stretched out his wing and his tough leathered leg, and she stared, unable to move, a wet towel hanging loosely from her hand with its corner dangling in the dirt. It formed an enclosed space with her rounded arm and her curved body, and the ground growing red with fallen flowers. Dalyon displayed his long sharp claws and drew them back into hiding. She had soft fingers, no claws, and limp arms that grew strong when she carried a load. The entirety of her grew strong as she lifted her boy or used her body to shield him from the sun.
Dalyon did not speak. The flock was silent. The day was as still as a picture in Ma’s storybook. They were here in this light, in this tree, drawn in thick pencil against the smooth grey sky. Now they lifted off as one big dragon-bird made up of smaller parts. They could break into pieces, and they could come together. 
Ma held her breath. Now Dalyon could feel her breathing.  He could feel her sadness at his leaving. The air held and lifted the flock high so that the small house below, with its narrow yard and lines of junk, became smaller and smaller, and the trees closed in around it. Beyond this place there were only trees, some living and some dying, in the vast unsettled forest.
Dalyon flew low over the forest, just brushing the tops of the trees. That was when he saw something of interest, half hidden amongst the undergrowth. It was metal and fine netting, a thing to jump on. It was something that a boy needed to help him grow strong. Perhaps Ma could go and get it for him.
 Dalyon sent the thought, and Ma was shown the thing that she must do. It filled her head as she gazed out beyond the fence to where the trees went on and on. The thought that she must leave came into Ma’s mind, and it stuck there like a prickle in her brain, irritating her every time she stopped being busy and sat down to think. It made itself into an annoying dream when she fell asleep at night and stayed with her in a repeating loop of mind pictures after she woke in the morning.
*
Now Dalyon forgot all about what he had seen. He returned to being a boy and went back to building things, lining them up all along the fence around the house. He chased and caught the cat, and put that in the line, but it kept running away.  He brought it back again and again. Finally he gave up and went back to more cooperative objects.  Life was predictable, the way he liked it, but still he kept feeling that things would change. There was a missing piece in his understanding somehow. Perhaps it was the cat. He placed it in a sack and put it squirming into the line, to discover that it was not the missing piece after all. He released the cat and sat down in the place where the sacked cat had been. He stayed like that as the sun moved through the sky, with his eyes fixed on the locked gate. Ma saw him as she looked out from the kitchen window, and her heart broke for him.
*
Ma struggled against the press of her journey for two nights, but on the third day she rose at the first light and placed food and water on the low table. She told him to eat when he was hungry, and to drink when he was thirsty. She said she would return when the sun had left the highest part of the sky and was sitting on the line of trees that he could see from the top side window that wore the curtains made of broken lace.
There was another story. She might not return at sunset. If this story happened, he was to put his pyjamas on and brush his teeth. He should go to bed then and sleep. If she was late, she would make camp and come back in the light. If she did not come back the first day, she would come back the next. If she did not come back by dark on the second day he was to go to the pantry where the flour drum was, and find the package that she had tied under the lid. He was to open it up and look inside. Then he would know what to do next.
She made him promise to stay. He promised. She left, and he heard the click of the door as it locked down. He climbed the stairs to watch her leave the yard and follow the animal path that came at length to the tree that always slept, even when small animals ran upon its back. The path ended by the bowing tree that belonged to the pink and greys. 
Dalyon closed his eyes and watched as she found her way through the scrub. He saw the thorn bush where she scratched her arm and heard the curse that she said. He watched her hair fall down around her face, and how she moved her arm quickly like she did, and he saw her pull the band from her hair and throw it away. He heard the rustle of the undergrowth and felt the eyes that watched her as she crashed her way through the forest, always adjusting her path back to the line she had chosen, after she had been diverted by rocks and trees and spiders.
When she reached the grasses by the river he decided he was hungry and remembered her instructions. He ate. After he had eaten he noticed he was thirsty and he drank the sweetened water that she had left by his plate. Ma unwrapped a parcel of food that she had brought with her. She ate dried fruit, took a long drink, refilled her bottle at the river, and wrapped the parcel again. Dalyon went back up the stairs, sat in the corner by the lace window, and closed his eyes. Ma was walking along the river now, searching for the crossing place.
This was when the sun began to move faster than she could. He waited for her to turn back, but she didn’t. She kept on. He knew that she would not be back by the time the sun reached the line of tree tops. He went downstairs and constructed a strong line of objects starting with the low table. He made sure that the edges met one another and that the wall met the line at the other end.  He counted the things he had lined up, many times. The sun was moving down the sky. He swept the floor and rearranged the odd assortment of chairs that was the kitchen furniture. The sun was dropping lower. He climbed the stairs and put on his pyjamas. He brushed his teeth. He gave some food to the cat. He took down the book in which there lived two lost children. The children were called Hansel and Gretel. They came upon a witch’s cottage made of food and killed the witch by pushing her into the fireplace. He showed himself the story, shouting at the witch to get in that fire and not come out. He sang a song about an old man who played nick-knack on his drum, and nick-knack on his shoe. The cat crawled its belly out from under the bed where it had slept for most of the day, and settled itself at his feet, purring loudly. Dalyon pulled the curtain back, saw that the moon was thin, and went to sleep.
Ma was sleeping too, beside a fire she had made in a clearing by the river. Mosquitoes bothered her in the night. She thought about her boy alone in the house. She thought that she was searching for him, forcing her way through bracken which kept grabbing at her arms and pushing her back.
He felt he was being squeezed. There was pressure, and a shock of dry air, as his head emerged from darkness into the brightest light. He felt himself torn, separated from a world that held him close. He shivered on a rough surface until he felt a touch and found himself lifted and held against warmth and softness which moved in waves beneath his fragile body. A form, light leaking around the edges, shadow and a shower of fine strands focused shards of light, drew him out and anchored him in this place. The skin on his forehead tightened as it dried and the gentle pressure of surfaces traced and informed him of the limits of his body.
Dalyon sat all through the next day on his bed, sometimes swaying and sometimes shaking the restlessness from his body with a loud shout. He closed his eyes and watched as she returned bit by bit. She was dragging the heavy thing tied together with vines, behind her. Sometimes she stopped to rest.  As she came closer to the river he saw that an animal was tracking her. He looked harder. The animal was big. Sometimes it walked tall like Ma, but with heavier, stronger steps, and sometimes it loped along on four, using its bent over hands to give it an extra push along the ground. It had hair all over, strong teeth and big hands with sharp claws. It was smart. It was hungry. If Ma did not come that night Dalyon would take the package tied to the lid of the drum that held the flour. He did not know what else.
He watched as the tracking animal closed in. ‘Go away! GAAH!’ he shouted, but it kept going. He closed his eyes and shouted right into the beast’s ear. It stopped then, and sniffed the air. Ma dragged on. The tracking animal looked around and that was when Dalyon saw its children, following a little behind, tumbling over one another, playing. It waited for them to catch up. It was about to go forward again when it looked back, seemingly straight at Dalyon. He stood up on his bed and jumped at it.
‘Go away!’ he yelled. ‘Get!’ His jump made him fall on the floor. The cat scampered out from where it had been sleeping under the bed and ran off.
The tracking animal shook its head. It had not seen him. It had caught something else on the wind and began to lope away in another direction. Dalyon saw that it had been distracted by a dead kangaroo. The kangaroo had a round belly and was lying on its back, stretched out and stiff. It had its mouth open, and flies spun around its head. The tracking animal come upon it, sniffed at the carcass and the ground around it. As its children caught up, it began to tear at the side of the dead kangaroo with its claws and sharp teeth. When it had changed the kangaroo into meat, it moved aside to let its children eat. Ma kept going, faster now, looking behind her, then head down, leaning into the wind.
It was late when she returned. Her hair hung around her face in coiled wet strings. She had dirt on her clothes, lines of dirt on her face, and old cuts on her arms where blood had dribbled and dried in a small series of red-black bumps. She took a long drink, gave him food and drink, kissed him, and went to bed to sleep for a long time. The next day she rose when the sun was already in the middle of the sky. She spent the rest of the day working on the thing. Dalyon stood by to fetch what she asked. When she was looking away and busy in her work, he glared angrily at it. He did not like this thing. He made days of circles around it before he gave it a chance to show what it could do. For a long time the swing and he went to war against the trampoline, jumping out at it when it wasn’t looking, claws exposed, and they called it many bad names.

Book Length Project Group Profile Writer PJ Johnson

In Tasmania
Pat has always been interested in writing, but never seemed to get around to it until a few years ago. She completed a Diploma in Creative Writing at Curtin Uni and got involved in the Perth writing community where she has been an editor for dotdotdash magazine and works for the Fellowship of Australian Writers Western Australia (FAWWA).
She has published both poetry and short stories. At the time of writing she is working with writer and free lance editor, Lisa Litjens, on a full length novel about a clash of wills with mining at its heart. With a  working title of Black River Red Sky, the story involves a young flawed and idealistic environmental activist is trying to prevent mining on a Kimberley station, where the owner has been badly hit by the GFC and needs to get income from anywhere to keep the property going.
The next step, finding the right publisher, will involve learning a whole new skill set.

In support of no child in poverty

Up a tree and bear-ly hanging on!A former Australian Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke once famously said that no child in Australia would be living in poverty by... well so long ago now that it doesn't matter. The aim is for things to improve in societies, and it is important to begin at the beginning. Childhood.

Ok, off-message a bit with regard to the purpose of this blog, but everything is connected and a parent with primary school aged children, trying to raise those children on their own, is perhaps now being punished for being in that position in the first place, treated as an easy target, a sin-carrier, scapegoat. The latest policy with regard to financial assistance for sole parents and their children reinforces all of this, but will not help to parents to raise themselves and their families out of poverty or social disadvantage. People end up in sole parent families for all sorts of reasons, and very few fit the common perjorative stereotypes popular in some quick-grab media stories.

This weekend a grass-roots movement is protesting the latest (significant) cuts to the already tiny allowance available to sole parents in order to raise their children. They are placing bears all around the place - look out for them in your Australian town or city. It's a peaceful awareness-raising exercise.

A single policy decision can affect one or more generations of a country's citizens and can have a detrimental flow-on effect to everyone else. Yes, work is good, but when a parent is trying to care for the needs of young children with little or no other family support, more help is needed, not less. Give a man or woman a fish and you feed them for a day, teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime. But if you give them a decent feed and enable them to get to the fishing spot, they will be able to think more clearly and have a much better chance of success of feeding their families for a lifetime and ensuring that the next generation thrives.

Abandoning First Draft for the Post Apocalyptic... for now

Here's a first draft of another kind. I don't think memoir writing is for me at the moment, so here is a voyage into an imagined future instead. I promise this will go further (because it already has!). I have scheduled a new segment to go on at about this time each week.

Again, I am simply playing with an idea here. I think with speculative fiction one begins by creating a world.

For now, the setting is an isolated house located in a dying or recovering forest. I thought the story could be told from the point of view of a child:



One            ‘Once upon a time,’ stories often started, ‘there lived many, many people in the world.’

Ma stopped talking for a moment and sat very still, looking in the direction of the open window with the curtain that moved its corner back and forth, in small flutterings. Dalyon lay tucked in his bed with his purple alligator, waiting for the way that the story would tell itself this time.
‘This was the time before the final Great War. The people didn’t have enough to eat, and they didn’t have enough to drink, and many fell ill. Even the air was not safe to breathe. In those days there were many bad things happening in the world, Dalyon. The earth was suffering too, so it tried to do whatever it could to heal itself. It shook, and it vomited, and it sweated, melting ice and snow that had covered its mountain tops for a very long time. There are some places where people used to live, that are covered with water now, and other places where great cities once stood. Some have been buried beneath the flowing mud. Some collapsed when the earth shook, and they stayed that way. And then there were the wars that raged across the surface of the Earth. It was a very hard time for people, Dalyon, and it seemed for a time that nobody would survive.
The people talked and talked about different ways to make it better, but they could not agree upon a proper course of action. So in the end they did nothing. It was easier to talk than to change the way things were done. They went on doing the same things they’d always done, which were the things they had become very good at. They were very good at making money, at arguing, and at killing one another. Almost everything that they knew and made was taken and used for waging war. When it was all over, most of the people were gone.’
‘Gone,’ Dalyon echoed.
‘Yes Dalyon, lost to the earth. They were no longer. It seems that people weren’t as big and as important as they thought they were. The Earth was bigger and more important. The people had forgotten that the Earth is a living thing.’
Ma’s eyes were staring into the distance far, far away. She continued to speak about the Earth as a living thing. ‘The Earth is our great mother, but sometimes I think she is a heartless mother.  Or perhaps she was just very sad. I think she must have wanted to start again, to clear herself of whatever had made her sick, which was greed and war, and bad feeling. As it turned out, wars were nothing compared to the way the Earth could fight back. In the process she destroyed many. Eventually things settled down. Some families were lucky enough to survive in small pockets.’
Ma stopped talking. She forgot that she was telling a story and sat quietly on the side of his bed with her eyes flicking back and forth, and with drops of water forming on her brow. She had got stuck on the part of the story about the small people in small pockets.
Dalyon didn’t mind. It gave him time to think of the small families in small pockets. He thought of the family in his own small pocket. He thought he could carry the small family around in his pocket, and he could take it out to play whenever he wanted, then put it away again.  He thought about the little people clinging to his hair as he swung back and forth on his swing. He thought about the small family sitting around his bed when he couldn’t sleep, telling him stories about all the small pockets where they had sheltered from the wars and the Earth’s sickness.
Ma rested her hand on his arm. She had more of the story to tell. 
‘Now the world has many places separated by seas which are made of very deep water. The water is so deep that if you stood in it, it would be over your head. If you put this house in the water, the water would go over the top. If you stacked many houses like this one on top of one another, the water would go over the top of them all. The water in the sea goes on and on. It is spread out over a very big area, Dalyon, much bigger than the distance that you would have to travel to pass through the forest of trees that lives around this house. The water fills the spaces between the different lands. People used to travel across it in boats that floated on the water, and in planes that flew like birds above the water.  People were very clever at making things like this to travel far, and to travel fast, but they weren’t clever enough to know how to live in peace. When the wars, and all of the other things that happened, passed, there were… in the whole wide world there were just a few thousand, perhaps ten or fifteen thousand. People. That sounds like a lot, I know, but it isn’t many. They were all spread out in places, on land separated by water and by mountains. I was one of those people, Dalyon. I lived with my father and my mother in a small house at the bottom of a mountain, far, far across the sea. They moved there before I was born, to get away from all the trouble. They tried, but they didn’t quite escape. There was something in the air, they said, left over from the war. When I was still small, not very much older than you are now, my mother died, and soon after that my father died, and then I lived by myself until I was grown into a young woman. I didn’t feel alone Dalyon, not really. My mother seemed to be there to teach me and to watch over me. I felt she was still there, although I couldn’t see her. Perhaps I could hear her. Then I couldn’t. She’d gone.’
Ma had been sitting on the edge of Dalyon’s bed, but now she stood up and walked to the window. She pulled it closed with a bang, and the curtain fell still and silent. She turned back, looked at Dalyon, and smiled. ‘You know what happened next, don’t you? One day a man came walking down the mountain.’
‘Papa Terry.’
‘Yes, Dalyon. He brought you to me. Then he brought us here.’
Ma came back to sit on the side of his bed before she spoke again.  Now her voice was soft, and she sounded as if she were asking a question. Dalyon searched, but he couldn’t find the answer, so he couldn’t tell the question.
‘The man brought others too. Not here. Somewhere. I don’t know where they are now. He found them and he saved them, you see. We all came here by boat. After we landed, we went our separate ways. I went into training for a year. You won’t remember. Do you? I hardly remember it myself. They seem to – ah,’ Ma shook her head. ‘No. It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
She let her eyes drift over Dalyon’s face. ‘There is one thing I do remember very clearly – my first sight of you, and how I felt then, so strange, as if I had met my destiny. When I first saw you, you were such a tiny baby, all bundled up against the cold. He told me you were very special, Dalyon. All children were special, but you were a special boy. They said you would have a different way of thinking. They knew this would be so from a test that they did on your blood. That is why they chose me to be your mother. Perhaps I am different too. Difference is a good thing – it can make us strong, you see. The people as a whole are stronger, with difference. They said that before the war, people were afraid of anyone who was different and that they liked everyone to be the same as them. Once there were many languages, but by then there was just one, called English. Other languages were forbidden. People were afraid to speak them, even at home. People were watching – the people who liked everyone the same as them. They wanted to destroy everyone else. That was a very bad thing. Now we are not like that, praise to the Great Mother. War and Mother Earth made the world change. Everything changed. People changed. Those that were left. Now we are all part of the Great Mother’s experiment, you see.’
Ma’s voice grew quieter as she said those last words, and she stopped speaking again for a time. As Dalyon waited he held the purple alligator up to see how it looked against the dimming light coming through the space between the window’s curtains.   Most of its colour was gone now and just its shape could be seen outlined by the space around it. Ma’s face was an outline too. There was some light coming through the curls in her hair. Dalyon looked around the room. The colour was seeping out of everything. Even the story that Ma had been telling, seemed to have been drained of colour. After a while she spoke one ending to the story she had been telling. She laid her body down on his bed with her face next to his ear, and she spoke it in a whisper.
‘I tell you this story so that you will remember one day, and think about how to make the world safe for the children of the future. The whole story has been written down in a book so it won’t be forgotten. I want you to remember that book, Dalyon. Do you understand? I hope you can.’
Dalyon still did not know what Ma was asking, so he said nothing. Ma sat up again, wiped her hands over her eyes and her face, and let out a slow breath. She spoke the second ending to the story in a loud, cheerful voice.
‘So that is how you came to live here with me, as my little boy. This place used to be called Australia. We were brought here because in this place the land is very, very old and magical, and because it has survived. It sleeps peacefully here. Now all the wars are over and the earth is healing. There is nothing left to fear. We came, and now we will live happily ever after,’ said Ma.
She bent over to kiss him then, and to stroke the hair away from his face. ‘Go to sleep little one,’ she said.  ‘The moon is thin tonight.’

the Crying rooM

This book of short stories, The Crying Room by Chris McLeod is available through the Fremantle Press website or perhaps Chris McLeod's website.  Do you love poetry, text that finds its way into those crevices of meaning and emotion that are beyond the reductionism of plain language usage; text that seems to extend beyond metaphor itself? And beyond the story, the melody line, is jazz-like improvisation, playing subtext, subterranean flow, exploring the rifting tributaries of underground rivers. To follow, the reader needs a willingness to suspend linear thinking, a certain stillness of mind, the commitment to go deep, to wait in silence perhaps, as we have heard that the Quakers do.

What is this compilation all about? Here is a quote from the inside cover blurb:

"Concerned primarily with the shifting ground between men and women, and within families, The Crying Room opens out into an exploration of the rhythms, moments and stories that pattern lives begun in hope, and lived in flux."

Better still, from the beginning of one of the stories:

"Nights in the forest: an owl flies at a dark window, sees, reflected for a moment (there is a moon, big moon) an owl, flying. In its eyes, huge, cold, impassive, sees an owl flying at an owl flying at an owl ...
     Behind the glass, sleeping, a child, a girl, dreams of a bird swifting through darkness, white bird, flying at her eyes."

I've read three stories so far, powerful stories that encourage this writer-reader to be courageous in experimentation. And, as a writer, I have a theory: for each book that we read, for each work of art that touches us, a palimpsest will remain, and our own work will be richer for it.

International Women's Day Event - Saturday March 9

An event featuring female writers will be held this Saturday at Azelia Ley Homestead, Manning Park in Hamilton Hill (close to Fremantle) as part of the celebrations for International Women's Day. I'll be there, in amongst the writers, some of whom will be giving talks, some holding stalls, and some, myself included, will be running workshops.

The event isn't just for women of course, and there are a wide range of activities planned that will be of interest to all.

The program is posted below:

  Nectar Fiesta Program
                                                                       10am - 4pm

9th March
2013
  Join us for a day of celebrating local women , networking, community building, writers, inspirations, stalls, music, dance, children’s entertainment,  great food and coffee.
v All Day- Ladybird Entertainment and Fairy Sandie with hoola hoops, face painting, skipping ropes and fairy magic.
v Azelia Ley Homestead Museum is open for a chance to visit the local history of Manning Park.  The museum will also have an amazing collection of vintage Pram’s on display, something not to miss!
v Massage Tent by the Challenger Institute of Technology Students by donation
 Nectar Sand Sculpture by Tim Darby
Although he is more well know these days for his work in the sustainability area, Tim Darby actually started his career as a Sculpture. Lately he has enjoyed dabbling in this art form again working with sand, and has quickly become one of the best sand sculptures in WA. He is excited about being able to join in over the weekend of the Nectar festival to produce a work that reflects and celebrates women. Come and watch his work develop over the two days of Nectar and make sure you stay for the celebration when the sculpture is returned to a pile of sand!
Nectar Stalls
 A wonderful group of women in small business, showcasing their wares, talents, and therapies.   Stalls include:-
 vXquisit, Mutima Beautiful baskets
vLoo Taylor, Anne’s Aprons and Baby Bibs
vPasha Jewels, Hidden Pantry
vDelish Ice, Bon Pussy
vAustralian Bush Flowers
vAnjel Ms, Big Bamboo Jewellry
vVillage Café
v Nicci's Smalls,Kiki Design
v Delilah rose vintage.
 
Nectar Writers
Market Place - Azelia Ley Homestead Museum Verandah’s
1.     Liana Christensen
2.     Lucy Dougan
3.     Suzanne Covich
4.     Susan Midalia
5.     Tricia lee  
6.     Sarah Evans  
7.     Teena Raffa-Mulligan
8.     Vivienne Glance
A book stall featuring publications by local women writers including
Elanna Herbert (Frieda and the Cops), Rachael Petridis (Sundecked), and Vivienne Glance (A Simple Rain, The Softness of Water and The Cat in the Box), and others. Also the anthology Birdlife from publisher Lethologica Press. See http://www.lethologicapress.org
Workshop Space 
1.     10:00am  Pick a Woo Workshop  
Workshop 10:00am Do-It-Yourself-Publishing and the truth about Vanity Publishers.  How you can avoid the Vanity Trap and publish for profit and reach readers around the world.
Award winning local West Australian Author, Trade Publisher and founder of Do-It-Yourself-Publishing (Author Services Provider) Julie-Ann Harper has been involved in the publishing industry for over 16 years. Julie-Ann’s goal is to expose authors to the truth about self publishing and to avoid vanity publishing. Authors are then shown how to publish quality books, reach global audiences and maintain control and keep the profit with new publishing strategies.
Julie-Ann will give you a FREE 69 page e-book at the end of the workshop or you can just bring pad and pen to jot down some of the publishing pearls she will impart.  

2.     11:00am Iris Lavell
This workshop will take the form of an informal discussion and is aimed at people who are in the process of writing a book, or who are contemplating doing so. Participants are invited to bring either a small sample of their writing, a question, or simply their curiosity about how they might begin, or continue with something they have already started. The workshop will involve an exchange of ideas, information and understanding about the process of working on a large piece of writing whether it be a novel, a memoir, or a non-fiction manuscript.
3.      1:00pm Jaya
 In this body are gardens...
Seeds of inspiration for women who write (or want to)
Poet/storyteller Jaya Penelope will lead you through a series of reflections and exercises to open the doorways of your senses and uncover the stories and poems that nestle within the flesh of your body. A playful and safe space to discover the hidden treasures that seed your imagination as writer and woman. Pen and paper provided or bring your own...
4.     2:00pm Tricia lee
A Nectar Workshop In her Soul every woman is beautiful Come find your Sacred self
With Tricia Mary Lee
©     “Sacred Journalling”
©     Writing as part of your Sacred Feminine Journey
©     Your personal
©     “Wheel of Wisdom”
©     “Soul Gardening” and your Tree of Life
©     Creating Blessings for your self, your family, your community, …….. Our world.
Join Tricia on this Sacred Journey into the power of writing as a Sacred Healing Art.  Bring journal, pen, pastels and large paper.
5.     3:00pm Sarah Evans  -  MEMOIR: MINE THOSE MEMORIES TO FEED THE MUSE

PROGRAM IN THE RED TENT….
 
 10am                          Opening by Dr Carmen Lawrence
10.30am - 11.30am    Inner Sky Kavisha Mazzella

 
Inner Sky is a singing and silent meditation practice that goes for an hour. We sing a chant and as the last note falls away we let the silence be and become one with that ..sitting together is silent meditation for a few minutes ,we then  start another song and so on . We explore the relationship between music and silence .We go higher and higher with the music and deeper and deeper with the silence within.
12pm - 2pm   Nectar Poets and Writers   -  readings from local writers
v12:00pm  – 12:15pm          nandi chinna
v12:20pm  – 12:35pm          Jaya
v12:40pm  – 12:55pm          Jennifer Kornberger
v1:00pm    – 1:15pm              Susan Midalia
v1:20pm    – 1:35pm              Liana Christianson
v1:40pm    – 1:55pm              Suzanne Covich
2.30pm
Performed by husband and wife duo West O’ the Moon.
Embodied, passionate, erudite, women from different cultures across millennia have sought to find unique ways of expressing their experience of life and their relationship with the divine through the medium of  poetry.
Weaving together story, poetry and music, West O’ The Moon will perform some of the jewels from this underground tradition, as well as the stories from the lives of the ordinary/extraordinary women who created these poems. Focusing on the medieval bhakti poets of India such as Lala, Mirabai and Mahadeviyakka, this performance also includes some ancient poets from Western traditions, such as Sappho and the Shulamnite from the Song of Songs .
Accompanying these poems is the music of Branan Dubh, trained in North Indian classical singing his haunting music has an ethereal quality that supports Jaya’s unfolding of the poetry
3.30pm Afrotonic and Tendera
DANCE, VOICE, HARMONIES…PURE ENGERGETIC
Sacred Space Lounge in the Red Tent
11am- 1pm NewBorn Mothers with Julia Jones http://www.newbornmothers.com.au/
1pm-3pm Death Café http://www.passionatelifeconsulting.com/the-passionate-life-project.html
3pm – 4pm Kim OMeara Stories from Rwanda, hear Kim’s amazing experience and new life path after an extraordinary trip to Rwanda.
4.00pmEvent Close
Thanks for your support
Donations for Nectar to Women can be made through
http://fremantlefoundation.com/nectar-for-women-supporting- generations-of-women/

Motivation and Determination

Before a writer gains that first publication there are often subtle, and not so subtle, discouragements from people who might or might not have the writer's best interests at heart. For each 'fragile flame' (thanks Jewel) these faint puffs of hot air might be just enough to extinguish or delay the work of a writer with a sensitive disposition -  a disposition that sometimes translates to their writing in the most beautiful ways. But whether a hardy or sensitive soul, or of any other dominant disposition, is not the point. My belief is that the strength of literature exists in its capacity to employ multiple voices in as many ways as voices can be used. It can take the form of stories that are told and written down, those that are carefully crafted in the tradition of the great canons of literature, poetic prose, the romp, chick lit romance, action thriller, horror, speculative, sci-fi, crime, detective story, gritty realism, the profane or the profound.
Discouragement often comes in the form of scepticism as to whether the work is likely to attract a reading public, and therefore worth considering for publication. Worse still, this doubt might extend to whether it is worthy of publication, particularly as the ease of publication increases by the simple clicking of a 'Publish' button. As ideas change about the exclusivity that surrounds the act of publication, debates about worthiness have come increasingly to the forefront. All is distraction to the writing itself, and this is where a person needs to be very clear about why s/he is engaging in the activity.The interests of the writer might intersect with those of the commercial book industry, or the literary fiction industry, but in most cases they are not one and the same.

First things first. Before even allowing concerns about publication to come into it, there needs to be the absolute freedom to play with the work and to enjoy the process. To get excited about it. To fall in love with the writing all over again. Because, let's face it, most of us are not engaging in this enterprise with any delusions of making our fortunes. There are faster and more effective ways of doing that. A job. A promotion. An education. An entrepreneurial spirit. Writers might engage in these things, but they are not the writing.

So what have I found is needed to keep going? (And who am I? Just another of those voices expressing a viewpoint in the tradition of free speech. Use it or lose it. Use it, or lose the confidence to use it.)
Clarity of purpose Freedom to fail... or to succeedA deaf ear to discouragement or white-antingAn open ear to encouragement and constructive feedbackFlexibility, willingness to change, learn, growDon't worry about wasting time - time is not wastedPlay Break the rules if it feels like that is what your work requires (sometimes it is better not to even know the rules. What rules? You'll learn them soon enough. Someone will let you know.)Enjoy the process - have funDevelop a consistent work habit Believe in your own processKeep going, but it doesn't have to be linear. Any scene will do.And be determined. Be very determined!
Oh yes, and when the manuscript is finished, some appreciative readers would be nice. Certainly.