Stoopid ears

So apparently I cannot print today because I went to the doctor about feeling dizzy ever since New Year's Eve and lo! I have not partied too hard, I have Labyrinthitis. No, not a morbid fear of minotaurs or of walking into confusing spaces, but a viral ear infection that gives me dizziness and flu-like symptoms. I have to drink lots of fluids and rest and not drive too much, move too fast and according to my husband, this means not operating my press. Even a little bit.

Poo bum.

So I have gone through the pantry and found all the dregs of the Christmas treats: half a box of Roses, some gingerbread, etc, and am lying on the bed snorting at Kate Beaton cartoons. Here are some of my favorites:

Dude watching with the Brontes

Victoria & Albert

Courtly Love


Jane Austen transcends fandom

Yesterday I found a hard copy of her book in Paperchain Bookshop, but I didn't have my Christmas book voucher with me so had to leave it behind *sob*. I hope it's still there when I get the chance to drive over again.

I was in Manuka yesterday to see Albert Nobbs, which is a grand story about women that will be very popular in womanly circles. I certainly enjoyed it. Glenn Close makes a very good man, mainly because her hands aren't pretty. My biggest beef about any movie involving Barbara Streisand (only slightly off-topic) is that she always has a perfect manicure, no matter if she's playing a struggling dish-washing girl or a man or an ordinary woman. Ruins the illusion every time.

*pout*


*more pouting*

All Hallow's Sugar

That's better... a bit of sleep was all I needed. I've been having weird stomach pains and bloating (sorry, TMI, I know, but I guess if you've been a long-term reader, you'll have read worse) so I'm slowly testing out what might be the cause. I'm off alcohol for a while, and I'm trying to cut down on sugar (I don't think it's the culprit, but now's as good a time as any) so I think I had a low sugar moment last night. Best Beloved is praying I'm not gluten-intolerant, he loves his bread and pasta. I just want the ache to end!

It's been a pretty sugary couple of weeks, drinking with family and friends and then the heady rush of Halloween. I was invited to a couple of Halloween parties, couldn't make one because of visiting family, but I did get to the other, handily situated next door. I've never been into celebrating American traditions like Halloween, Valentine's Day or Thanksgiving, but it's different when you live next door to a lovely American and she's homesick for her fun.

It was a small but faithful party, complete with costumes and activities. My favorite cake-maker, Sam of Amore Cakes (at the Farmers Market), had made a batch of Witch's Fingers, pale shortbread fingers with almond slivers for nails, and I bought some for Julia, which went down a treat.


Here she is as Athena, complete with owl companion and our gift.


This is Lisa, Julia's housemate, originally from Tasmania, dressed as The Bad Apple. Scary!


Here we are, dressed in our Folk-Festival-bought masks, using them to be the Sad Cow and the Zombie Country Mouse.

We carved pumpkins,



ate devils on horseback and bobbed for apples.





The apples, once wetly won, were cut into chunks and dipped into caramel, or 'carmel' as Julia's north-western accent makes it. Yum! That, plus all the 'candy' and the exquisite pumpkin pie with maple cream, shows you how sugar-loaded I've been.

Bumblebee wore a cloak that I'd made for him on the weekend. His old cloak had been given to a smaller body a few months before and he really missed having a black hooded cloak. I seemed to have a 'free' day on Sunday (actually, when you're self-propelled, no day is a free day, but I felt I needed to spend some actual time doing something for him) so I proposed we shop for material and make a cloak.

Blimey, that was a tough day. Note to self: NEVER GO TO SPOTLIGHT ON A SUNDAY. We're both still rolling our eyes at standing in a 4-metre line to buy 6 metres of cheap black poly-cotton. Then my sewing skillz proved to be quite rusty, so I spent much of the afternoon unpicking and resewing, and was still up at midnight and then up at 6am the next day to finish it in time for that evening's party. That made Best Beloved roll his eyes, but I felt great when I saw him wearing it with a variety of masks.

So I had two fails during the week. One was as a sewing queen, and the other was at bobbing for apples. Here's something you probably didn't know about me... I hate putting my face under water. I've battled it for years, and I'm much better these days, can duck down in the pool and stuff, but I tried shoving my head into that wheelbarrow to get an apple in front of a crowd and realised that I was just not very happy about it. I don't have a problem with losing face, so I just stood up and confessed that I couldn't do it, and thankfully it was a nice group of people who didn't call me a wuss etc. Apparently there were people hiding in the house to avoid even having a go, so that made me feel ok. And they even let me eat the carmel-dipped apples :)

I did carve a pumpkin, so I did make some contribution to the evening's festivities!





(and this is what happens when you put pumpkin scrapings near my husbang.)


This weekend I'm attending The Gathering, a local conference for bookbinders from all over Australia and even a few from overseas. Should be fun... but first I'm going to a movie tonight (by myself, because BB will be flying back from business in Cairns): Anonymous! Yum, eye-candy galore. That's the best kind of sweetie.

Sturt Winter School, arriving

So here I am, sitting cross-legged on a single bed in a two-girl dorm in a boarding house. Flip back -- bejeesus -- TWENTY-SEVEN years, and you'd find me doing the same thing. Except that at 9:52pm it would have been lights out ages ago, and I wouldn't have had a small quantity of alcohol to make the boarding experience that much fuzzier. Or maybe I would have, I can't remember minute details of that time, but I do know that I had a very naughty roommate, so smuggled alcohol wouldn't have been out of the question.

There's fresh white linen on the bed, and besides me and the bed, and the other bed, there's also two of the following: desk, chair and wardrobe, but only one bedside table, which is actually next to the door. It's not a big room, so there's not more floor space. The girls must have to climb over each other to get around. The radiator was on full-bore when I first came into the room (which I bet never happens when the girls are here), but now that I've turned it off and opened the window, the room is quite a good temperature.

I'm in Hartfield House at Frensham School in Mittagong, NSW, and I'm here to teach a class at the Sturt Winter School fulltime for the week. I've unpacked, had my induction and my dinner of butter chicken curry followed by pancakes & icecream (I made a joke to the guy in the kitchen that I was here to gain weight, and he replied that it was his job to make sure I gained weight, so I'm doomed), and even watched a movie in the drama theatre (Up in the Air, with the delectable George Clooney and the even more gorgeous Vera Farmiga).

Speaking of films, Bumblebee and I had a date this morning to see Super 8, which I highly recommend. What a ride of a movie! We laughed, we jumped, we cried (well, I did), we laughed again. Like E.T., mixed with something a touch scarier and funnier. Suitable for 10+, probably not any younger.

Yesterday Colonel and Lady Duck visited, with my lovely little nana, who has moved in with them after a couple of those age-defining health incidents that leave you unable to live alone anymore. They brought her up to see our new house, and to visit a plaque that's been put in the war section of the local cemetary for my grandfather. I tell you, if I could be half the jolly little old lady my nana is when I'm that old, I'll be happy. She's inspirational. She was touched to see a few of her Precious Things around my house: a set of mugs she'd passed on to me years ago, a lovely wooden standing lamp, a painting my grandfather painted. We always think of inheriting things when people die, but it can be nice know while you're still alive that your descendants treasure the things you love.

Anyhoo, here I am, loving the Sturt experience, but wishing I didn't have to feel so bloody prefect-ish, sitting on my school blanket on my school bed. I've got a full class tomorrow, and one of my students is a fellow ANCA artist, who always said she wanted to do one of my classes... I never think those statements are real, but she meant it! She's a lot of fun, so I'm looking forward to tomorrow even more.

As you can tell, I've got internet access with my trusty dongle, so I'll try to blog a bit this week, and share some photos of the class's progress. Right now though, it's lights-out, otherwise I'll be a grumpy tutor.

Caretaker mode

Week two of caretaker mode, where we have to be careful about how much mess we make in any part of the house and garden. For people like us, who trail grunge as we walk, it's excruciating. Moving into our next house will be like releasing your overfed gut from a tight belt or taking off a tight pair of shoes and walking barefoot on a cool wooden floor.

Actually, even though I don't wear tight shoes as a life philosophy, walking barefoot on the cool wooden floors of this house is just sooooo good when the weather is this hot and sticky. Since the next place is carpeted, I'm storing up the nice feeling while it lasts.

Lots of sniffs but no bites as yet. We're having another open session on Wednesday, and we might have a bit of something fun in the Real Estate section on Saturday if my agent gets her indominable way. She's a fighter, I tell you.

Yesterday I got to spend the whole day in my lovely cool studio... sigh of relief. As those of you know who hang out in studios, or even with a kitchen table, you can't just plunge in to being creative, unless you have something burning to be done. I'm feeling a bit disconnected, so I decided to do something that would just take a day, and be completed by the end of the day... doing with a sense of purpose, such a good feeling.

I made jam labels for Best Beloved's produce:




I decided to play with the cats as an identifying symbol of our household, and so created the 'Two Tails' motif. I'm probably going to make an Ex Libris for us out of the label design on the far right. They're a tad clunky, it's my first play with linocutting for ages, and I printed them using my nipping press. Still, it was a happy day's work.

Bumblebee gets home today after four weeks of only being home for two days at a time. He doesn't start school until next week, so we can have some fun together this week (as long as we don't mess up the house!). I took him to see the Space Invaders show at the NGA last week, which we both really enjoyed. He was very impressed at seeing byrd's work in there. It's a great show, only running for a few more weeks if you like a bit of street art.

I'm teaching a few times next month (as in February, tomorrow): a one-day class at the Belconnen Arts Centre on Asian Stab binding (and will be back there in March for a day of Altered Books) and a 2-Saturday class at Megalo doing a broad survey of simple bookarts bindings. Both classes will be a lot of fun, so if you fancy a bit of making, come along. At the very least I need to earn some money! New houses aren't cheap :)

Ergh, time to go outside again. Why can't we just skip February and head straight into Autumn? I adore Autumn, it's the most glorious time to be in Canberra (besides Spring).

Oh -- went to see Another Year (by Mike Leigh) the other day. At the same time, Best Beloved saw Black Swan. I was too chicken to go to it. We both came out wishing the other had seen our movies. So on the way home we told each other all about them. No spoilers for you, but both are really good. The Coen brothers' remake of True Grit is even better.

Do yourselves a faaaaaaavvvvooooouuur.

Happy New Year

Welcome to my eighth year of blogging. I hope you're all enjoying the new year so far.

Our new year started with being woken by fleas in our bed.

Apparently fleas like a quiet house. I've had two tales told to me by members of each side of my family (old and new) of going away and coming back to a house so full of fleas that [tale 1] their feet were black with fleas as if wearing ankle socks and [tale 2] they had to sleep on a shelf of a wardrobe with the door closed to escape them. Apparently vibrations keep them (fleas, not both sides of my family) from wantonly breeding, but that sounds a bit suspect to me. Probably more to do with the lack of attention.

Anyhoo, we woke up resolved to do something about it. Going to Woollies at opening time on New Year's Day is now my favorite time to shop... so quiet! And all the people who are there are clutching their heads slightly. Almost as good as Best Beloved's mother who apparently went shopping while the whole world was watching the moon landing. Again, I'm a bit skeptical of that tale. Who was serving her?

We pulled the bed apart and cleared all the floors of the carpeted end of the house, kicked the cats outside, and set off some flea bombs. This, of course, meant that we had to go out for a few hours into the killing heat, so we went to the movies.

We saw The King's Speech. It was in Dendy's largest cinema, and there were no spare seats. The audience was vocally appreciative, laughing and cheering and at the end clapping. I think it's not only that the movie is excellent, with wonderful acting and a spiffing script; it does more to generate a sense of pride in being Australian than any Australian film could. I can't speak for any other audience member, but I related to Lionel's egalitarian spirit, his larrikin (sp?) streak, and his cheekiness. Colin Firth was his usual loveliness, especially when he swore. Sigh.

We came home feeling karmically unbalanced, having unleashed noxious gases upon hundreds of little bodies. But a solid vacuum and a bedding change later (plus a good cold shower), we feel much, much better.

Good enough to keep packing & cleaning tomorrow.

Photos are off, luv. I did lose my camera. Yes, I know that my iPhone has one, but it hasn't got a flash or macro. I'm officially in Object Mourning.

Humph.

I had the weekend to myself while Best Beloved and Bumblebee went to visit friends in the Southern Highlands. It was lovely. I had a few wines at a lovely ceramics exhibition by Teffany Thiedeman and then rode my bike to Dickson to get some noodlebox yum. I rented a few DVDs (looking at them the next day, I wish I had made some better choices, but on the most part they were good) and then bought a box of yum, put it in the back basket of my bike and rode joyously home through the night as is my wont when I've had a few wines. At least on that leg of the journey I remembered to put on my helmet.

When I got home I discovered that the box had fallen and opened and I'd trickled a Hansel & Gretel trail of spicy Nasi Goreng all the way home. Luckily there was enough to make a meal, but not the usual extra leftover meal...


So, I had a weekend of watching DVDs while I hand-sewed some envelopes for my Book Art Object contribution, plus good quality studio time. I'm making a type sampler which entails actually sorting through all the assorted typefaces I have. You'd think I'd have done this before, but no, there's never really been time. Now I'm making time.

Actually, there's lots of time in the day at this time of year, when the cats wake one at dawn's crack with pillow purrs and paddy pats on the face to be let out to catch the dratted wattle-eater that has been teasing them for years in the front yard. Sigh.




Best Beloved almost lost the right to that title this afternoon. He rang me at the studio to let me know they'd returned, and this was the exchange:

BB: I did something bad, I'm afraid.

&D: What did you buy? (This being the usual way he tells me that he's bought something large, expensive or frivolous, or all three.)

BB: No, worse than that, sorry.

&D: Did you sleep with someone?

BB: No, um, worse than that even.

&D: What?! What could be worse than that?

BB: Um...

&D: Spit it out, man.

BB: We went to see Harry Potter without you.

&D: [shocked silence]

BB: You still there?

&D: you utter BASTARD!






He's making me a nice meal tonight, has just given me some dark choc-chips to munch while he & B make muffins, and has promised NO SPOILERS.

I'm considering forgiving him.

Basking in the light

Guess what I've been doing tonight?

PRINTING THE LAST POSTER. Well, not the last print of the last poster, but I'm now editioning the last of the seven images. And then I have to print the title page and colophon, so there's still over 250 pages to pull, but YAY nonetheless. I'm aiming to pull the last wet print on Sunday, maybe Monday at the latest, because we want them snug inside their folios and ready to launch by the Thursday afternoon at the Otakou Press wayzgoose.

The second-last one was tricky. Each poet had sent me a choice of poems, and I selected them not only by whether I liked them (because, I have to say, I liked all of them in different ways) but also by whether they would work on a wall. Because some poems are better in the hand, or in the heart, but not on your office/bedroom/loungeroom wall.

Michael Harlow is a local poet -- he doesn't live in Dunedin, but they claim him as theirs, especially when he comes second-up in the NZ Post Book Awards (it was won by Brian Turner, who is also local, and is a past Otakou Press poet). He's also a practicing Jungian psychotherapist, which, when I was told, put the fear of Ceiling Cat into me. The pressure to understand! To make the poster MEAN something! ARGHHH!

I kept putting his poem, The Piano's Birthday, aside; then I thought that I'd better not leave it for last, so tackled it after I finished Sarah Holland-Batt's poem. The few poems that MH had sent me were lovely, but not WALL, except this one, which at least had some visual triggers in terms of colour. Bear with me, I will show you the poem, but I just want to talk about the process for a mo before I show you the outcome.

I looked at it, and looked at it, and felt lost. It seemed dense and loaded, but accessible if I could find an 'in'. I decided to google the term 'marjatta tree' as it seemed to be the most obvious clue.

Lo, there is no such thing as a Marjatta tree, but there is a Marjatta, who is the heroine of a Finnish legend. She was a virgin who became pregnant after swallowing a mysterious talking whortleberry [!!!] and she gave birth in a stable to a God-like child who went on to achieve Finnish world dominance. So, a Finnish Christmas tale, I guess. SYMBOLIC!

And that's when my brain imploded and the poem opened up to me. I don't claim to understand it completely, but it became clear that it was a piece about inspiration and creation, and that there was two completely separate parts to the poem: the first, which is about raw KA-BOOM creative energy, leaping out of foreheads and fighting out of wombs using whortleberries and so forth. The second part is much quieter, and more about inspiration, about hearing and seeing and thinking and being moved, ever so gently, so write a Poem.

Then I was thinking about the colours he'd given me: green and red, and I was thinking about adding some blue somewhere, when Donald-the-Special-Collections-Librarian, seeing me fiddling and leaping and fistpumping and puzzling, offered to show me the facsimile copy of Jung's Red Book that Michael Harlow had donated to the library. Oh OH OH! That's when it all fell into place.





Jung made this incredible dream diary, and decorated it like a medieval illuminated manuscript, and the text is black, with three dominant colours for the decorative elements: red, green and blue.

BINGO.



Goodness me, it was a finicky print to edition. I was printing four colours in each pull of the press, and if I vagued out at any point, I'd miss a bit and stuff up the print. Like this:



when I forgot to ink up the green bit. And this:



when I forgot to ink up the bottom black block. GAH.

This is when music is very important. You need to be in the moment, following a routine, not thinking about anything except the print and whatever music is playing. The music needs to be familiar, but not so much so that it puts you in a trance. If there's nothing to think about, you go into a trance. There needs to be a lyric or two to chew over while you check your work. On this vein, I'd like to thank Laura Cantrell for her newish album Trains and Boats and Planes, especially her most excellent cover of Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It did very well in the role of editioning aid.

It took all weekend to get the print printed. I did some other things: on Friday night we had the opening of Donald-TSCL's marvellous exhibition of Pulp Fiction, where we were all asked to nominate our favorite titles from the show. I'm torn between Slay-ride for Sandra and Tall, Dark and Dead. The covers are amazing, and Donald-TSCL has managed to source a few process pieces, where you can see the photo of the nude model, the drawings of her, and then the finished cover. This is going to be a very popular exhibition, more so than the ALL ABOARD Railway collection exhibition that just came down...

After 3 glasses of exquisite Otago white, I stumbled into town with my Australian librarian friend Allison and we caught the latest cinematic offering from Flight of the Conchords' Jermaine Clement, Predicament. It won't be a smash hit, but I can see it getting a gentle cult following, and has some very good moments of hilarity.



I also had another couple of hours playing European board games with Allison and other librarian types on Saturday, flexing the skills I'd picked up a few weeks before to come equal second in Alhambra. w00t!

Now I'm working on the final piece bar the title and colophon pages: Robert Adamson's poem The Sibyl's Avenue, chosen because it has a cat in it, which makes the folio complete. You can't have a print folio without a cat, peoples!



I wanted to use some of the fabulous ornamental blocks that they have in abundance here, and found one that suits bird chitter:



It's a lovely calligraphic flourish (guaranteed to make Ronnie moan more than usual in the comments :) ).

And the cat chitter? Check this out:



I've never seen anything like it; most ornaments have confident design lines, but this one is deliciously wobbly and warbling. It just looks like the noise my cats make when they're trying to talk bird. Wonderful.



And this print definitely holds the touch of the maker, as I'm using my finger to ink up the bird 'footprints', as it's the only way to get them fading out as they're supposed to.

Goodness. I also entertained a posse of schoolboys with their teacher this afternoon, from Otago Boys High. At least one of them was fully engaged, which made it fun.

Tomorrow I'm doing a live interview on Channel 9, the local television station! It's a show called Dunedin Diary, and the producer said today that I'm only being interviewed for 5 and a half minutes, so feel free to talk as fast as I like... I don't think she realises the speeds at which I can reach when I'm excited and nervous.

It's funny, standing not quite at the end of the tunnel but clearly seeing the light. Best Beloved and Bumblebee are flying over on Saturday night, and taking their time to get to me, arriving in Dunedin on Tuesday to hang out for a while before we start travelling around the south island for a couple of weeks.

I haven't mentioned them much... Best Beloved has been living up to his name, doing a fantastic job as a single parent. He's wrangled Bumblebee through a load of accelerated homework (so that he can take 3 weeks off school) and kept the cats from fretting too much. I can't thank him enough for holding things together while I came here. I couldn't have done this without him.

OK, time to turn off the radio -- I listen to it as a break from my personal playlist, and I've kept it on the position on the dial at which I found it, which is a local commercial station I've lately dubbed INXS FM because they play at least 4 INXS tracks a day, consciously or not -- and head back to my digs to flake out on the couch with my feet high in the air. I've just finished reading Jude the Obscure on my iPhone (which almost made me break out weeping in the dining room of the college over my bowl of fruit and yogurt), and am halfway through Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave (something I dug out of the college library, which is a weird mix of donated Classics and abandoned airport novels). Life is tough...

Sick

One of the good things about being busy is that it tends to ward off sickness. Check my archives; I haven't, but I'll bet you that every time I get a bad cold or flu, it's when I've stopped moving for just a moment. I finished my Winter Type school, I cleaned up my art skool office, I ran around delivering books, and then on Friday afternoon I got to my studio and thought 'here it is, I'm free for a few weeks'. I got to the end of printing some little prints for the upcoming Megalo Loupe show (opening next week, Thursday, I think), and as I was cleaning the press I could feel my body releasing itself to the germs. My lungs filled, and my energy just disappeared. Snap! Just like that.

I was a puddle of snot on Saturday. As you can see below, I rallied all my remaining energy to get through Sunday, and yesterday only just managed to drive to Cooma to deliver Bumblebee to his Grandparents before collapsing into bed with extra sore neck and shoulder muscles from all the carrying and driving and extra snot from not resting, and I've been coughing up my lung linings any time I move. I've been in bed ever since, except for a quick delivery to Megalo today of the Friday prints. I'm very surprised to find that lying quietly in bed with lots of juice and fresh fruit (I'm overdosing on fresh strawberries) is actually working. I'm getting better.

I had a conversation the other day with someone about the essentials of life... one of those priority lists: which comes first? Rent? Food? Air? She (I think it was a she... sorry if you're reading this, it's been an eternity since now and last week) said something that stopped me in my tracks. I usually put the list so:

Air
Shelter
Food

But she said the first (or second one -- we couldn't agree whether air was a given or not) was WELLNESS. That you just can't do anything without it.

And it made me think about the books I've been reading in the last few months:

The Spare Room (Garner)
The Plague (Camus)
Reading by Moonlight (Walker)
So Much for That (Shriver)
Tiger's Eye (Clendinnen -- reading this at the moment, and will probably finish it tonight)

All books about reassessing life and death and morality and memory in the face of severe illness. I didn't read them close to each other because of any agenda, they just fell into my path. And they all say pretty much the same thing about wellness. It's so hard to function without it, and I have the utmost respect for those people who do.

Being sick and muddleheaded, I can't say anything profound or meaningful about this: I did mark a few passages in the Shriver book but I've lent it, so can't find them... I'm very much enjoying Inga Clendinnen, as she's such a humane writer. She wrote a lovely line about grieving for her brother that now will stick with me:

It is more than thirty years since he died. Now he rests quietly enough, just below the breastbone, where grief has hollowed a place for him.

I don't know where I'll head when I've finished Tiger's Eye. I would like to read something without illness... I'm tempted to read Little Dorrit because I'm enjoying the show so much and have never read the book. Did anyone else shout out loud with laughter when they saw the visual depiction of 'Mr Ef's Aunt'?

And then I have to decide what to take with me to NZ when I fly at the end of July: I have a whole day's travelling, on 4 planes and lots of sitting around in airports. What will keep me enthralled but not be too heavy? I have a few ebooks, but I like the feeling of holding a book in front of me. Any suggestions?

Here's a nice distraction: my friend wrote to me today to say BRING ON THE FLUX CAPACITOR: Today is the day that Marty McFly arrived in the future after hitting 88mph in a pimped out Delorean in 1985...
OMG! How cool is that! I haven't been so excited since we moved into Prince's 1999! Damn. Scurrilous email rumour. Real date is October 21, 2015. Oh well, cheered me up last night, so all good.


And just to finish, and get into a different definition of SICK:



This is Mr Padge, rolling ecstatically in a box of fresh organic vegies, nuzzling the carrots especially. He just went for it, snout first, nuzzling his way through the delicious smells until his whole body was in the box, and he was drooling on the carrots. I videoed him as well, and will get it onto Youtube or I can has Cheezburger sometime. It's truly weird, and very funny, especially when BB tells him to 'stop nuzzling the broccoli, it's not Nice'.

caught speeding

OK. Now I really know that I have to SLOW DOWN and stop trying to think about or do zillions of things at the same time.

Firstly, I completely forgot about a meeting I was supposed to (albeit quite informally) chair on Monday. That was embarrassing.

Then, when I had the rescheduled meeting today, I realised when I arrived that I had forgotten to inform one of the other committee members that it was even on.

THEN. Tonight, Bumblebee and I rocked up, revved up, to the cinema to see Twilight and New Moon back-to-back as a promo for the release of Eclipse and were pulled up, short, in the lobby, at the absence of excited teenage girls.

That's probably because the promo was LAST NIGHT. Not tonight. Sh*t B*m P** B*gger W*nk.

I felt like the baddest mother in the universe, or at least the ditziest. And decided that the $40 I'd blown in cinema tickets should be considered a speeding ticket... that I deserved.

Bumblebee was very gracious. But disappointed. As was I, not by the prospect of watching the bloody movies, but by spending some fun time one-on-one with him doing something that he liked, as opposed to hauling him to my studio or some opening.

Sigh.

We ended up having a bowl of soup at a nearby Asian cafe and then seeing Toy Story 3 3D, which we both thoroughly enjoyed, especially the evil monkey. All the way home we chortled over our fav bits, and did evil monkey impressions along to some tacky disco song on the radio, so when we got home we felt like we'd actually had the evening we wanted. And he still got to bed at a decent time.

I hate letting people down. And feeling like I'm not all there.

I'm going to try to remember to breathe a bit over the next few days... and we're going to rent New Moon over the weekend and watch it so that we can go to see Eclipse next week. With a crowd.

Sigh.




PS. Isn't Best Beloved back? I hear you wonder. Where was he? At home, dear ones, with his particular brand of grumpy man-flu. Oh yes, it's truly been a faaabulouus week. Not.

Poetry, blowing, brightly coloured

It's the Aged Poet's 90th birthday today. I visited her this morning as a warm-up for her afternoon tea party, and she was frail but bright-eyed, like a bird. She confessed today to hating extreme old age ("it's really rough"), and I told her that she's allowed to be grumpy at her age. She agrees, and through the visit told me that she's planning to be grumpy more. She speaks in little loops, but just when you think she's lost, she comes in clear and strong, and the essential poet is still present whether she knows it or not, as she gazes out the window, enjoying the sound of nearby school children and pink & grey galahs.

I have printed her a momento of her birthday, for her to give to visitors at the party. The tragedy of her old age is that her vision is almost completely gone, and her life has always been anchored on the visual. I give her a copy of the printed poems; she can't read them for herself so I read it to her, and she is so pleased that she hods it in her hands afterwards for my entire visit, stroking the beautiful Italian paper. At one point she asked me how many I printed. I answer 50, so that she can send some to friends after the party. 'Wonderful!' she exclaims, holding it in front of her, as though reading it, but it is upside down. When she does put it down, she keeps reaching for it, to check that it does, indeed exist.

Over 70 years of publishing, and she still feels the thrill of seeing her work in print.

When I leave her, feeling pleased with myself, I decide to drop into a nearby bookshop that I've heard of but never visited. I find treasure: Accidental Grace by Judith Beveridge, a poetry volume I've been searching for over the years. It's well out of print (shameful) and very hard to find. It must be poetry karma, and returning so quickly!

I drove back to my studio, using each red light to drink a poem. I can see why this is a rare drop – you don't want to put it down, or let it go. I was honked once, to move along.



The tea party was a delight of interesting people (I think that's the right collective noun): poets, academics, school friends, artists, all gathered to pay homage to 90 creative years in a quiet and elegant manner. Aged Poet looked regal in the corner, holding court and glowing with satisfaction.

And then I went and spoiled it all by watching Prince of Persia with Bumblebee and his mate. Sigh.

Chance and Choice

Being part of the over-educated, over-thinking the small things, under-thinking the big things, will-vote-for-Rudd-to-keep-Julia-in-power, no-junk-mail, anti-capitalism-but-buy-my-wares demographic, I find buying new things very frustrating.

Walking into a store full of multiples of bright shiny units, I don't feel excitement, and I don't get the 'poor thing, let me take you home and love you urge' as other seem to, especially when they are faced with large shiny appliances. I don't like trophies.

Mind you, I don't think I'm a hunter, either, like many of you who regularly go on expeditions to all the local op shops, sifting carefully through the racks in search of whatever your holy grail is.

I'm definitely a gatherer, but in a very soft and random way, no order or system or structure.

I prefer meandering past somewhere, popping in if I've got the headspace, looking vaguely over the shelves and rack and having something snag the edge of my vision. Sometimes it's just a lonely object calling for someone, anyone, to buy them a drink and remember the old days. If it's not something I can think of a use for, I'll reposition it on the display in a way that calls more attention to it, and wish it luck.

Other times, I'll be trying to remember what I came in for (do I need trousers that fit me? How's my stash of crap printing tops?) and I will find something that will totally transform my whole wardrobe with a single wave of its magic wand. Or a book that I've been wanting to read for ages, and now is just the right time to buy it. Or not, but it will take its place in the bedside queue, and maybe even jump the queue if it's really alluring. It's all about serendipity.

Or when I'm going shopping for something specific, I prefer the op shops, because they have dedicated racks to jumpers, jeans, dresses, all arranged in sizes, so that I can head to one particular spot and see if the thing I want is there. If not, I'll go without. If I really really need it, I'll reluctantly go to a retail shop and find it. I tend to go to the same (big, cheap) retail shops because little boutiques either don't stock my size or they do my head in with all their tricksy ways of laying out their wares.

Which is a long, roundabout introduction to the fact that last week my lovely auntie Lou gave me a Border's frequent buyer card with five of the boxes stamped, one more to go, and then you get a free book. She doesn't have a Borders where she lives, and she knew that I'd love the chance to buy some new books. Present! yay! We love gift cards and vouchers in my family. But the action of choosing is sometimes crippling.

When I got to Borders (I didn't waste any time, Lou!), I wandered around, thinking, two books. I have to pick two books. The problem is, I could have taken home at least fifty in my first glance. For some reason, in a secondhand book shop, the books whisper at you:

Psst, have you read me?

Hey, you, yeah, you: I bet your copy of me is all bath-bloated and dog-earred. Wouldn't I look good on your shelf instead?

Mmmm... did you know that I'm signed by the author?

The minute you walked in the door, I could see you were a...

But in a new-book store, they are shouting at you:

BEST SELLER!

PRIZE WINNER!

GLOWING REVIEWS!

LUCID! RIVETTING! UNPUTDOWNABLE!

And the colours are all fresh and bright and there's repetition everywhere, even though the covers are different. The neatness conflicts with the chaos, and the room smells like cleaning fluid, not paper; old books have an aroma that lures me in. A while ago one of my Mackay workshop participants sent me a cartoon from the Australian? the Age?: A booth for iPads with a long line of people waiting to look and touch one, and next to it a small table with a sign saying 'Book Sniffing & Fondling', with one person standing at it, their face in a book, joyously sniffing.

So, there I was, wandering around Borders, two books for the taking, with about twenty minutes to choose before my movie started (The White Ribbon, which was amazing). Thank goodness for the movie, because without a time limit, I would have been lost. I should have walked in with a plan, a shortlist, clipped reviews, or something. Instead, I had vague memories of recommendations, and a profound regret that I hadn't clipped out the list of post-apocalyptic novels listed by Colin Steele in the Canberra Times a few weeks ago, since I always forget sci-fi titles when I'm faced with the crap covers and endless sequels in the Sci-fi & Fantasy section. Why isn't there a Speculative Fiction section? Who decided Science Fiction and Fantasy belong together? They are nothing like each other, apart from the fact that no-one seems get published unless their manuscript can be divided into at least 12 volumes.

Time was ticking. Best Beloved was in JB HiFi, his favorite browsing shop, and the only place we bother to get gift cards for him, and he was due to come back and grasp my elbow to propel me towards Dendy at any moment. I'm a Libran, I can't make choices under pressure. I couldn't come back, I don't get moments like these in shops very often.

I would like to say that I chose offbeat, quirky titles that demonstrate my superior alternate demographic (see line one), but I didn't. I ended up standing in front of the New Release and Bestseller racks (next to each other at the front of the store) and chose Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and So Much for That by Lionel Schriver. Books that everyone has been telling me to read, and that I would normally wait to snap up at the Lifeline Book Fair because they will be there in force after everyone else has read them for their book clubs and disposed of them.

Still, two new books! Not to be sneezed at... because they won't be ready to sniff until they've experienced a bit of life.







(Thanks, Auntie Lou... you're a champion.)

Mackay [2]

Yay, my dongle is dongling! I am an independent websurfer, free from the restraint of overpriced timing... and yay for salt & vinegar Samboy chips and a tonic water, the essence of kicking back in north Queensland. It would be something alcoholic if I were drinking at the moment.

Of course, the first day of the workshop went well, in my usual let's-wing-it style: throw ideas and choices at them, watch them reel while they have a quick cuppa, and then let them loose at a heap of materials and coax them all to make something they've never tried before.

I'm happy if each student can have a Eureka moment once in the two days of the workshop, and I got at least four today, so I have to try harder to get the rest happening tomorrow.

The exhibition for the Libris Award is being hung today and tomorrow, and it looks AMAZING. Jam packed with interesting work by interesting people. I will do my best with my crappy iPhone camera to capture some of it at the opening tomorrow night.

The poor director of Artspace Mackay keeps inviting me out to dinner with the rest of the crew and I keep making excuses. Last night I wanted to write (and wrangle the donger, fnar fnar), and tonight I'm just aching to sit quietly in a very unintellectual movie. So I'm off to see Date Night. Tomorrow I'll start to be sociable, but I've been talking all day, and I need to rest the vocal chords... well, that's my excuse, anyhoo...

Things I keep forgetting to post

I'm in a weirdly busy zone, not helped by the fact that I'm feeling fuzzy and early-coldish. So I keep forgetting to mention stuff that I really should mention.

Like: you may or may not have read about the Shopping Sherpa's amazing cargo cult arrival of an amazing amount of art supplies and books on the theme of art and design. I also was a beneficiary of that largesse, as there was a box amongst it with my name on it, as the secret donor is someone that I've connected with at some point (the mystery of all this is delightful). The box was full of yummies like a few Keith Smith manuals, and lots of handy book and journal instruction volumes. There were a few doubles with the books I've already got, so I gave them back to the SS to distribute (or keep in her new amazing library), but suddenly I have a really good shelf in my studio on books on books! So THANK YOU, secret person! I hope you are getting a warm and fuzzy feeling about being so generous.

Like: Shopping Sherpa also decided that I was the right person to share a free ticket to MicMacs at Dendy. In return I bought her some sushi and taught her how to play the Alphabet Waiting Game, which she played very enthusiastically, to my amusement. In the Alphabet Waiting Game, you try to piece together the alphabet from the text in the ads before the movie starts. It's harder than it sounds, especially if there are no ads by jewellers halfway through. In our version, signs and labels in the background of the ads are fair game, but others may disagree.

MicMacs is fantastic, but NOT FOR KIDS, even if it looks fun and quirky on the ads. It should be ok for young teens, but be aware that the first ten minutes are quite confronting, involving graphic death and shooting scenes. There's also some sexy stuff, but the violence is more shocking... and it's meant to be. This is a movie about arms traders, and it is deeply satisfying in the way it moves through periods of utter farce into a message that is real and deep.

Like: Edible Books Day is upcoming! 1 April is the actual day, but my book class at the art school are going to try to have a tea party next monday during class. I have to think of something fun but quick to do, because I'm driving to Sydney for the day on Sunday to attend the 70th birthday of my mother-in-law...

Like: I got Tim T's new zine! it's about a pornographic octopus, and it's hilarious. I'm not sure how or where he's distributing them -- probably Sticky? -- but if you want one, and you should, contact him at timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au.

That should do, for now.

Travelling the Road (again)

Yesterday we went to see The Road. I'd been expecting all sorts of faults, mainly because of the reviews I'd read around the traps. Consequently I wasn't expecting it to be as good as the book, and of course it wasn't, because the book is such a readerly experience, the warmth of it transmitting from the inside of The Man's head to the inside of yours, and a film just can't make that connection. I still loved it.

The one thing that did disappoint me was the ending. SPOILER -- if you care. It was the way John Hillman centred the ending on the nuclear (ha!) family, including dog(! in a world where animals are gone! I know it was a symbol that these were good decent humans who wouldn't eat their pets let alone other humans, but still...) and not about the natural world that was lost, which is how the book ended. Always human human human human preoccupations.

The only concession to the idea of nature as it was came right at the beginning of the film; otherwise any nostaglia was reserved for the woman and things like a childhood home and a can of cola (great product placement, all through the movie). Human things. Yet the book mourns just as much for non-human things like sunlight and fish scales and trees as human things.*

That's my only objection.

When I came home I looked for my post about reading The Road in Tasmania on holiday, and realised with shock that I'd posted it on the now-gone Sarsaparilla blog without cross-posting here. So it's gone! I'm going to repost it now, probably without any of the final tweakings I'd made at the time of posting (I might add a few upon re-reading). Here goes:


Travelling The Road

(originally posted on Sarsaparilla, Dec 13, 2008)

Last summer Sophie Cunningham and I had an excellent conversation in the fresh air of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens about reading whilst travelling and how it influences your travels. We thought a series of short writings on the subject would be wonderful. She had a post she’d prepared earlier, but it’s taken me this long to cook something up.

When I travel I choose books to read without much thought to the impact they may have on the travelling. Maybe they have been saved for holiday reading because of their lightness of being, perhaps they are next on the bedside pile, sometimes they are bought along the way when there is nothing else to do. I didn’t mean to take Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with me to Tasmania; I’d already read it, a year before, and had lent it to my sister-in-law. She returned it just before we left and I hadn’t removed it from my daypack.

Reading on holiday is part of the holiday, and I read things that I feel like reading rather than things I should be reading. According to my reading ledger (a Moleskine notebook listing everything I’ve read since July 2000 when I got tired of keeping a diary and decided to record only the things I wanted to remember), I was reading the Philip Pullman trilogy on the boat across the Tasman and the days after our arrival, enjoying the differences between Northern Lights and The Golden Compass. Pure escapism mixed with daily dreaminess: the perfect holiday.

We -- my husband, my ten-year-old son and I -- started in northwest Tasmania, visiting tucked-away Tasmazia in all its faded glory in the depths of Brethren territory and then passed through numerous hamlets desperate to stay alive by cultivating affectations like thickets of topiary or blankets of mural. All of which, in retrospect (I think my favourite way of travelling) suited Pullman’s visions of multiple worlds.

We moved slowly southwest: Cradle Mountain, Zeehan, Strahan, up the Gordon River, picnicking on the Franklin, all the cartime listening to an audiobook – abridged, unfortunately – of His Natural Life, attempting to give the boy a feel for where we were. He was impressed, but unfortunately it also served to show us exactly how little Marcus Clarke knew the territory about which he was writing.

It was about this time, heading back to the east and Hobart, that I decided to re-read The Road. I re-read books constantly, usually after a gap of at least a year or more. I’m also extremely fond of dystopian writing, with particular fascination (Gen X that I am) for post-apocalyptic survival stories, although not so much the type that makes mankind revert to sword-and-shield pseudo-Celtic tribal structures. The first time I’d read The Road (Jan 2007, says the ledger) I remember reeling from the impact, unable to read anything else for a short time, coming down slowly from the sense of heightened insecurity any good post-apocalyptic book will inject a reader with. I was curious to see if, now that I knew what I was in for, the same thing would happen again.



To this point, Tasmania had been wild and magical and lush; the south-west has the potential to be threatening and dour, but had provided enough jollies to keep my imagination at bay. Tourists, including us, have permeated the toughness and softened the inhabitants who have come to know who butters their bread. I began the book during a quick picnic on the shore of the Franklin River, upstream, under a highway bridge, sitting on a boulder, half-listening to my husband talking about the part his brother played in the protests, the boy listening fascinated. Within the first few pages I’d stopped listening altogether, and was totally submerged in a wasted world. When I emerged to keep driving, all I could think about was how lucky I was to be among living things, all those trees, all that living water, all that protest.

We stopped briefly in a town in a valley full of enormous concrete pipes and electricity infrastructure, and I was there again:

What is that, Papa?
It’s a dam.
What’s it for?
It made a lake. Before they built the dam that was just a river down there. The dam used the water that ran through it to turn big fans called turbines that would generate electricity.
To make lights.
Yes. To make lights.
Can we go down and see it?
I think it’s too far.
Will the dam be there for a long time?
I think so. It’s made out of concrete. It will probably be there for hundreds of years. Thousands, even.
Do you think there could be fish in the lake?
No. There’s nothing in the lake. [17]

I initially read the book slowly, allowing myself to be distracted by the charms of Hobart and Port Arthur, putting the book aside in favour of television, local newspapers and trashy magazines. Five days later, we caught a very rough ferry over to Maria Island off the east coast, taking only what we could cart in a human-drawn wire wagon over the car-free roads of the National Park island.

The machine-free silence of the animal-filled camping ground was perfect for losing myself again in the animal-free surrounds of The Road. Twilight seemed long on the island, and it was a fair walk to the toilets. I’d never seen so many marsupials in one spot, and was afraid that if I squatted in the bushes surrounding the tent I’d get any kind of nasty surprise. Wandering back past the convict ruins, looking up at the pristine sky with more stars than human thoughts, looking around at the strange vegetation, looking down at the tent, I could have been living at any point of time.

He wet his finger and held it to the wind. When he rose and turned to go back the tarp was lit from within where the boy had wakened. Sited there in the darkness the frail blue shape of it looked like the pitch of some last venture at the edge of the world. Something all but unaccountable. And so it was. [41]

When I returned, looking into the tent at my son sleeping with his limbs splayed on his airbed was exquisite.

After Maria Island (not to be done in a day; we will be back for a longer stay), we went north up the coast to Coles Bay, a place I’d been years before on the honeymoon of a marriage that didn’t last. We were lucky enough to get a gorgeous camping spot in an area that is highly sought after and distributed by ballot: getting a last minute cancellation like we did is like winning the lottery. Clean, well-maintained individual spots with personal tracks to the beach and a view over the bay to the mountains called The Hazards.



Sitting on the beach with a torch, the book and the ominous clouds that settle over The Hazards every night without fail, no matter how blue-skied the day has been, I finished The Road on that first night at Coles Bay. Afterwards I put down the book, turned off the torch, and sobbed, watching the lights of the town twinkle to my right and listening to the other campers go about their evening drinking.

Next morning, before the others woke, I re-read the ending and other parts that had stuck with me, and sobbed again, silently into my pillow. I watched them wake. We all went for a bushwalk up The Hazards to Wineglass Bay and back, a full day of walking. I had done part of this walk before, and I may yet do the whole thing again, but I guarantee you, I will never be able do it again with such a heightened sense of emotion.

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you. [46]

My husband is fit and strong and likes to walk fast. Normally patient, he becomes exasperated when thwarted in expending his excess energy. The first part of the walk was fraught with tensions as young man loped, older man barked, and I dreamed along in the rear, taking in every leaf, every bird, the shift in blues between the sky and the sea, the occasional lizard or marsupial. Once we’d reached what we thought was the halfway point and had a swim, I encouraged older he to leave us behind, to go at his own pace, and meet us back at the car where he could probably read most of the paper – and do the crossword – by the time we made it.

Once he’d disappeared around a bend, the tension lifted, and my son and I closed ranks and walked at our own pace. For the first six years of his life I was a single parent, and twice in that time he was close to death. Standing over his hospital bed I forced myself to envisage a life without him: bleak, but do-able. Ever since, he has been the most precious gift in my life with every day that he exists. He doesn’t remember much of that time, and he loves his stepfather intensely (as do I), but when we are alone there is an heart-muscle memory of such intensity that we invisibly clutch at each other.

We walked. He whistled. I laughed at the dark patch of sand-stain on his white swimming shorts. We entered a part of the landscape full of dead fire-blackened trees and grey dust, bleak and twisty. My imagination went into overdrive.

There were times when he sat watching the boy asleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasn’t about death. He wasnt sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness. Things that he’d no longer any way to think about at all. They squatted in a bleak wood and drank ditchwater strained through a rag. He’d seen the boy in a dream laid out upon a coolingboard and woke in horror. What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return. [110/111]

I watched his tall, thin, fragile frame walk in front of me in the grey dust, the trees obscuring any part of the real world, and thought about a short story I’d once read in the New Yorker: a woman living in an apartment block thinking about how she would manage in a post-apocalyptic New York, whether she would have the guts to fight the woman in the next apartment for water, whether she would be resourceful enough to find what they needed in the streets around them. Written before 9/11, the story has haunted me with its questions about personal resilience and I wished I had kept a copy. I took out my camera and took a photo.




Before I could put the camera away from taking the above shot, my son suddenly began a series of what I think of as his ‘battle moves’: pretending he’s fighting some invisible enemy and winning.



They usually make me laugh, because he’s such a chicken in real life, hates the sight of blood, animal guts, won’t clean up messes because they’re messy. This time they touched me; he is so vulnerable, so open, so precious. What would happen if I wasn’t there?

And then we emerged from the dead wood into sunshine, pink rock, butterflies and sea sparkle. He would cope. He has his fathers. And he has this beautiful world. For now.






[*This, for those who don't know, is the ending:

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. [241]

A cut-out to the view and a voice-over of that para would have perfected the movie.]

hands on

Feeling moderately better. It's a revolting cold, just squats in your sinus chambers like some horrid monster, and one day you feel like it's shrinking, and the next it grows until you think your head will explode. Today hasn't been so bad, and I hope tomorrow will be even better. I'm trying to kill the monster with olive leaf extract and lashings of garlic.

In the meantime, I've been kind on myself. Lots of rest, lots of nice food, not too much rushing around. I quite like cooking when I'm feeling poorly, and I managed the best risotto I've ever made a few days ago: chicken with fennel, lemon and garlic. It was stunning, and I think it's because I added lemon juice and garlic every time I added stock, so the flavour built up slowly and strongly. Yum! [PS: made it again last night, and remembered that the other WOW factor is adding lots and lots of ripped up fresh herbs -- marjoram and sage -- and stirring through just before serving. Plus fresh black pepper.]

Today I wasn't so kind: I took Bumblebee to see This is It, the Michael Jackson movie. Sigh. All I can say is that it was just like a Michael Jackson album: lots of schmaltzy crap interspersed with moments of absolute brilliance. By the end of the movie you've had quite enough, and I was relieved to be out of the cinema. The excess! The money spent! I kept thinking about the sheer amount of power and resources going into his method of spreading the word about saving the planet. The tears of gratitude shed by the dancers when they found out that they were in the show... the way you could tell that MJ (as they all called him) didn't like to touch or be touched, no matter how many times he said 'I love you'. And his hands...

I came home and started telling BB how I'd become mesmerised by MJ's hands... great big slabs of capability, they were, and strange on such a slight dreamy frame. BB surprised me by barking out a laugh, and told me that just today he'd listened to Ricky Gervais et al saying exactly the same thing!



Blimey. Honestly, I couldn't stop looking at them, and it was obvious that he was quite aware of their size and has practiced hard at keeping them unobtrusive in his dance moves. He had bandages on the tips of his right hand through much of the movie, and I wondered if he'd been trying to stop biting his nails in preparation for the concert series?

I'm sure the concerts would have been amazing. He was planning to put so much energy into them that I doubt, if he'd not died when he did, that he would have lived through the entire run of 50. What impressed me most was that he didn't rehearse to recorded tracks... it was all live, live, live, and he was quite a perfectionist. If only he'd kept away from doing long, tedious, overblown ballads! So boring, so unnecessary. So him.

Lastly, we've rediscovered real-life Scrabble. I've dusted off the old set, sewn up a pretty cloth bag for the tiles, and I'm 'versing' (as the twelve-year-olds say) anyone who will play me, and teaching Bumblebee how to play (and to stop saying 'I'll verse you', which makes me think of hard-core poetry slams). Byrd turns out to be a very good RL player, for all his lazy typing facade; BB is highly competitive, and if he loses, he'll fret until he wins the next game soundly. Me? My style is fairly laid back, because I just like the actual playing, but if I get a whiff of success, I'm capable of raw aggression and smugness :)

weekending

No child, no urgent work, a weekend to plant flowers and see movies. Felt a bit flat on Friday arvo, all my urgent deadlines of the last few months have been met... BB was off winning a trivia night so I called up Byrd and he came over for a chilled evening eating stir fry and watching crap(pish) tv. He's great company.

* * * * *

On Saturday I went to the farmers markets and was seduced by rows and rows of pink and purple petunias going for 12 pots for $10. I bought a stack and filled a few planters on the front verandahs. I'm a lazy gardener, but these will only last a season and I think they've going to cheer me up a lot when the weather turns hot. I spent most of the afternoon fixing the front garden tap which broke as soon as I used it to water the flowers. Of course, I didn't take the broken bit with me to the hardware store, so I bought the wrong size replacement, and had to drive back and do it all again. There are no hardware stores in north Canberra anymore, so this was very frustrating. Mind you, there's no substitution for the buzz a bit of DYI gives once it's done.

* * * * *

Reason I like Best Beloved #1364

Sitting in the dark watching the end of Julie & Julia, where it says (and this is NOT a spoiler):

Julie Powell is now a writer.

Her book was made into a movie.

Best Beloved leaned in and said into my ear:

They should have said Her book was made into half of a movie.

Indeed. BB didn't like the Julie bits of the movie much, but he fell in love with Julia (and her kitchen), so I guess I've got a bit of French eating ahead of me. It's lucky I love butter.

A lot of people laughed at the moment that Julie got her first comment, so I'm guessing there were a few bloggers in the audience.

I liked that movie, but I didn't love it as much as I did Moon. I went into the cinema expecting to spend much of the time with my eyes shut (I'm so bad with suspense) but came out completely exhilarated and energetic. Onya Duncan Jones! I love you as much as I love your father. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go and see the movie.

I'm trying very hard to write up my Common Press experience. I should be finished soon; I'm just trying to do it justice. I'm sure my braincells will kick in soon. I haven't had alcohol since my birthday, but when I stop rushing around, it takes a while to make my brain work again.

Secret diary time

Friday night was Date Night. One of my friends insists upon Friday Night being sacred for dates with her partner, and I've decided it's not a bad thing, except that I don't hire a babysitter every week, I have Date Night every fortnight when Bumblebee is off learning how the other half lives. Alternate Friday nights we try to have a family date. So, last week it was Coraline and ratty, this Friday it was District 9 and aliens. I realise in my excitement I twittered SECTION 9, which is classic me, I get everything wrong even when it's printed on a ticket in front of me. I'm not usually one for gore, but this movie was terrific, funny and interesting.

I'd had a stressful making day on Friday, lots of doubt and fear about the impending exhibition, so aliens wreaking revenge upon gun-toting South African men was just the ticket. Bernice came over last week and we discussed the Doubt and Fear thing. It's not the 'exhibition' that worries me, it's the 'solo' bit. My playful work is fine when it's bouncing off someone else's theme, and interacting with other people's playfulness, but I'm not sure it can hold its own on its own, if you know what I mean. When I think about my opening, my mind jumps to my first 'grown-up' kissing experience: standing in the carpark of the local rollerskating rink with a ring of excited teenagers around us chanting 'SNOG! SNOG! SNOG!' whilst clapping. The pressure to be cool was enormous, especially when he stuck his tongue in and I had to gag inwardly instead of openly. I've been nervous of public expectations ever since, even though I know in my heart that I can usually cope.

ANYHOO, I went to bed on Friday night hoping that I would dream a few solutions to my immediate problems, and woke on Saturday feeling a bit better. I spent the day in the studio looking hard at what I've made / gathered / played with so far, culled some things and adjusted others, and came away feeling much better and with a determined 'f*ck it, they'll have to love me just as I am' attitude. Not sure if I can maintain that over the next ten days, but I'll try.

Today I had a lot of fun. I spent the afternoon at the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG, pronounced Cee-Mag) teaching three book workshops aimed at 4 to 8 year-old kids in honour of Book Week. We made Secret Pocket Diaries, which are 'snake' concertina books folded down from one folded and slit sheet of paper, then decorated and stuck up with tape to make a special book all about the child, complete with a secret pocket to hide things from the reader. It was great. I'm kicking myself because I took photos, but left the cord for my phone at the studio so that I can't download the photos.

The kids had a ball, and they made fantastic books. Each group had up to 24 kids along with their adults, and the first group was having such a good time that we were finding it hard to get them out in time for the next session, when suddenly the fire alarm started. And kept going. And kept going, so that we had to evacuate. We all stood out in the square outside CMAG, wondering what to do. One of the fantastic staff gathered the children together and did an impromptu book reading on the steps of the Canberra Theatre, and by complete coincidence, two police officers were going past with Constable Kenny Koala for a separate event in the same building; they were stuck outside as well, so they put on a quick performance for us.

Later in the day, when we were all cleaning up, I glanced at one of the evaluation forms filled in by a parent on behalf of their child. In the space left for 'What was your favorite event of the day' was written 'fire evacuation'! What with book readings, Constable Kenny and the flashing, noisy fire engines, it was pretty exciting.

CMAG have an amazing team of really dedicated educational officers, and while today's events (watercolour painting, story readings, indigenous story-telling, face painting, book arts workshops; all completely free) were in honour of Book Week, they also have a regular CMAG on Sunday program on the first Sunday of every month, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's one of those regular events that isn't well known, but once you've found out about it, you wonder how you lived without it (if you have children of the right age). I wish it had been around when Bumblebee was smaller.

I'd like to thank Ben, who was my very able assistant, and Amelia, who was a wonderful boss for the day. Plus all the other people in the amazing team. I haven't taught a dedicated kid's class apart from various school groups (as volunteer Mum), and I really enjoyed it. I rode home on the treadlie hoping I could do that particular class plan again somewhere/sometime, because even though I'd mapped it all out beforehand, it wasn't until the third and final session that I'd worked out how to REALLY teach it (or perfect it), and it would be a shame not to use that method again. Maybe it's something I could propose for Woodford next application...

use the force, mum

Last night we got home from watching Coraline as a family, already creeped out by such an excellent creepy movie, to find the cats in Bumblebee's room, very, VERY excited and doing mad circles around the room, concentrating mainly upon his bedside table/filing cabinet thingy.

Uh oh.

I quickly closed the door of the room, with myself and the cats inside and the others outside, and proceeded to look around. This wasn't easy, because B's room was extremely messy, with a larger than usual floordrobe and lots of toys and comics everywhere. I moved the bedside cabinet, and a huge rat shot out and ran behind the bookshelf. The cats went crazy.

Uh oh.

I really don't have time to tell you a long and amusing account of my half-hour with ratty and the cats; suffice to say that I moved everything up onto the bed (which backfired when the rat got onto the bed) and away from the walls, which meant that the rat and the cats had a kind of circular race track with me leaping around trying not to encounter ratty myself. At one point it ran over my boot, and I had a vision of it running up my jeans leg.

Then it ran up the curtain and onto the rail; Pooter scrambled up onto the stereo but couldn't reach it.





I had a brilliant idea: I opened the window, undid the wire screen, and attempted to knock the rat down so that it could escape out the window. Nice plan, but no banana, as it got to the windowsill, but then leapt IN and back onto the floor, and the race started again.

Sigh.

I grabbed a long pointy thing and tried to herd the rat towards the cats, hoping they would actually do the right thing and kill the bugger. A few times they had it cornered, and they growled and posed and acted like normal blokes in a bar-brawl: they chickened out and backed off.

Finally -- and I will apologise now to those who love rats, but I could do no more -- it leapt up on B's dirty clothes basket and I whacked it with the long thin thing I was holding. I whacked it a few times to stun it, and then scooped up the limp body and put it outside -- well and truly outside.

It wasn't until it was over that I realised that I'd been using a lightsabre!

Then I remade the bed, cleaned up a bit, and called B in -- and held a button to my eye and said "see? Your other mother can do anything..."

None of us had a deep sleep last night.

leaky

Nice weekend, but emotionally all over the place. I guess I was a bit tired, what with losing two weekends straight to the press, and all the excitement of the exhibition set up and opening.

Saturday morning, I went to the markets, and stood in the line for fish with Annie Trevillian, where we chatted about the opening and then, overworking women that we are, discussed ideas on some workshops we could hold together -- printing your own bookcloth and then using it. Doesn't that sound yummy?

Then I grabbed the chance to go to my life drawing group, the first time this year! I got there late, which was a shame because our model was a fantastic man who understands artists (being one himself) and gets into uber-interesting poses, and I missed the really short poses. Still, the rest of the session was brilliant, and I wished I wasn't so rusty. It made me determined to turn up as often as I can, and I think most of my upcoming weekend teaching commitments are on the alternate weekends: phew!

Saturday afternoon was the floor talk for the exhibition, and it was lovely, of course. We counted 36 bodies, which is fantastic for something only advertised by email and this blog, and Rosemary Dobson herself came, which made the afternoon really special, and I'm pretty sure the group knew it.

That night Best Beloved and I just flopped with a bottle of wine. We went to bed really early, because we were both buggered, and I read to him while he played his gameboy. A friend had emailed me during the week and asked if I'd read Rosaleen Love's article in the latest Australian Book Review. She said it was really, really good. I had the issue, but I hadn't even looked at it, thanks to busy-ness. So I thought I might read it, and that I'd read it aloud for BB.

The essay is called 'Treasure Hunt', and it's been longlisted for the 2009 ABR Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay. I've always loved Rosaleen Love's writing: she's normally a Sci Fi writer, and a very good one. I have a signed copy of her Total Devotion Machine, and that's because I used to work with and for her late husband, Harold Love. I've only met Rosaleen maybe once, maybe twice, and then only briefly, and I'm sure each time I gushed slightly.

Harold and I and his research assistant, Meredith, once worked on a scholarly edition of poems by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. They did all the really hard work, and I got to make it pretty, using Caslon and working out the correct usage of obscure ligatures like 'st' and when to use the long 's' that looks like an italic 'f'. It was painstaking, nit-picking work, but hilarious because of the subject matter -- John Wilmot was the bawdiest poet on the planet.*

Harold died a few years ago, after a long bout of cancer. It's one of those situations when most of your sadness -- as an outsider -- happens at the early stages, and by the time they die, you're almost used to the idea, and so you're sad, but not overwhelmed. I took the news of his death shamefully easily, considering how much I'd liked working and talking with him.

On Saturday night I started reading to BB a few paragraphs of an essay that promised to be very interesting: about the aftermath of living with a book-collector, and realising that the books will lead you to discover more about your former spouse. Then I startled him by faltering, pausing, bursting into floods of tears. He didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do. Eventually I pulled myself together and kept reading, but kept stalling as fresh gales of tears stormed through me.

I thought at first that it was a delayed reaction to Harold's death, and it was, in part. I'd been told about it second- and thirdhand, in abstract. I didn't really take it in properly. Then I realised that it was a lot more to do with the main theme of the essay: how little one can really know the people you're supposedly closest to, and the loss that one can feel when one realises that there will *never* be a chance to change that situation. And I also know that I cried (and still cry) at the excellence of Rosaleen's exploration of these things. It's SUCH a good piece of writing.

Poor BB doesn't cope with crying very well, it makes him uncomfortable. Is that a male thing? So I pulled myself together again as much as I could that evening, but it's very hard to close the door on a room stuffed to the point of overfull with grief, both old and new. My door stays closed much of the time, but if something -- anything -- turns the doorknob slightly, the door starts bending and threatening to fling open. I start leaking.

We went to the movies on Sunday morning, to see The Baader Meinhoff Complex. I sat in the cinema waiting for the movie, and leaked rivulets of tears down my cheeks, silently, wishing they'd turn the lights down properly before anyone noticed. Luckily the movie was too rivetting to encourage tears, but back in the car driving out to Fyshwick (to buy BB a deep chest freezer for our newly-emptied garage), the leaking started again. It's subsiding now, but I still feel that there's a really good cry left to schedule in sometime this week. Maybe I'll find a quiet place later in the week and read the essay again... And you should all rush out and buy a copy. Then tell me what you think. Did you cry, or is it just me?


*Funnily enough, this ties in beautifully with the launch of the new Trunkbooks volume, 'Hair', which I'm in, because my piece is completely informed by my time working on the Rochester volume with Harold and Meredith (not the same Meredith who edited 'Hair'!)

Hawt

My mother (a youthful 76) complains as soon as Adelaide's temp reaches 28C. But when presented with these extremes she's like a Londoner in the Blitz. She adopts a near-gleeful stoicism: its little old lady vs the elements, where parsimony & determination ultimately trump the forces of nature....
TFA

Thus said one of Pav's commenters recently.

It struck a chord with me, because I am usually the first to whinge when I'm hot. A couple of years ago, as regular readers will remember, I whinged mid-Woodford to Best Beloved that if he REALLY loved me, he'd take me south instead of north at the hottest time of the year. He did, he does, he took me to Tasmania last year (where I had a meek little whinge in the middle of the night at Cradle Mountain when we were freezing in a tent in January and the airbed had just gone down, but nothing major: I loved and appreciated the cold).

But this heatwave has brought out the same qualities as TFA's mother: I am rallying and being the soothing voice that jollies along a VERY grumpy BB as he rails fruitlessly against the heat, c**ksucking meteorologists and our lack of aircon. I find myself getting cheerier and chirpier in the face of his bad mood. It's one of the weirdnesses of our marriage... if I'm grumpy, he'll get grumpy and join in. If he's grumpy, I'll cheer up and try to jolly him out of it. I wish he could play my way, then we'd have fewer fights, as I'm very easy to pull out of a bad mood.

So I have sent a cranky BB off to the movies today while I try to wrangle a couple of websites. He has gone to two movies in a row -- we are working our Club Dendy cards hard, so he's getting one movie free. I think he's gone to see The Wrestler and Valkyrie. I'm surprised at the latter choice; I guess his personal ban against all things Cruise has been overcome by his fascination for all things Nazi.

Yesterday we went to see Milk. I ran into Crit on the way in, and got to stroke the gorgeous soft head of her baby as she sat next to me in the movie foyer, trying desperately not to have to go out in the heat again with him. We had to line up a bit to get a good seat, because despite it being the first week of such an excellent film in a city with a very strong gay community, Dendy put the movie in one of its little theatres, and of course it was sold out. Tuh.

I highly recommend Milk. Julie Rigg said on this week's RN Movie Time that she's never seen him play such a personable character, but she'd obviously never seen I am Sam. It's true, though; Penn's Harvey Milk is adorable: compassionate, intelligent, strategic, and everything you want a politician to be. If the real man was half as nice, it makes what happened to him twice as tragic.

One of the things I loved as well was the typography in Milk's campaign ephemera. I'm sure it's wonderfully accurate (I'm sure many San Francisco households still have their Harvey Milk souvenirs), and the use of stark, sans serif wood type on the posters was stark yet stylish. Touches like that make movies really enjoyable for me.

I came away from the movie sad and cranky (as I always am when I am reminded of The Twinkie Defense) but highly energised. It's a fabulous movie, now my second favorite next to Slumdog Millionaire.

I'm counting down the hours: we get Bumblebee back tonight! He has one full day at home before school starts on Tuesday. I think he's going to want to spend at least some of it in my studio with his Warhammer gear...

I'm going to leave you with wishful thinking about somewhere cold: