SnakyPoet

Postscript to the Deception

2012-02-01T19:47:00.001+11:00

This is an edited version of a recent comment to other online friends of Penelope (the girl we had believed dead).

What we have experienced does seem to me to match the descriptions I found of behaviour which has come to be known as Munchausen by internet.

After much research and much thinking, I have finally come to the conclusion that the girl we interacted with was indeed the real Penelope. As the online school records show, she and the girl pictured were in the same class and involved in the same activities. They were/are quite likely friends. I expect it would have been easy enough for her to obtain those photos; she might even have taken some of them herself. I imagine the other girl was not aware of the use to which they were put.

I believe we felt affection for the real person — that the emotions, reactions, ideas, opinions, tastes and interests she exhibited to us over the years were for the most part genuine, but that certain events she recounted were either exaggerated or downright false.

It has been distressing for us all in more ways than one.

I am not so devastated as I was when I thought she was dead; however I am sad to have lost a friend and sadder still to think that she must have some degree of mental disturbance.

I have now said all I can or want to on the matter. I certainly wish Penelope well, albeit with a heavy heart and not a lot of hope. But, ‘while there’s life there’s hope’ and I am sure she is alive. That’s something.

Dear Hoaxer, thanks for the poems

2012-01-28T16:56:00.018+11:00

(To participate, click on the badge.)

‘I write very good poems / when people die,’ I declared recently. Those lines were the start of one such poem, one of several I wrote in mourning for an online friend who had died from a brain tumour not long after her 18th birthday. I also blogged about the experience here, but have now removed those blogs.

I was not the only one intensely grieved, nor the only one to post about it. One young woman tweeted her grief and was unpleasantly surprised to receive a communication to the effect that the supposed dead girl had told a different online community that she was dying of leukemia; her supposed cousin had later advised them of her death before she turned 18, and at his request the members of that community created a memorial page for her. The administrators smelt a rat at some of the cousin’s communications, tracked the IP address, found it the same as the not-so-dead girl’s, called her on it and eventually received a confession and a promise to seek therapy. (I seriously doubt that she has done so.)

This was all happening at the same time as the same girl was telling us, in the online community where I encountered her, that she was dying of a brain tumour. No-one announced her death to us, and she was still posting after turning 18, though more and more briefly (due, we understood, to the exigencies of her condition). At a certain point her journals were deleted, and when I Googled her name I found one of her paintings on tumblr, definitely hers, with a notice under her name: R.I.P. 1993-2011 — which seemed conclusive.

Since the revelations from the other group, I’ve done a lot more research online and found a number of records from the College she attended. It is clear there was, and most probably is, a girl of that name. She is not the same girl, though, as appears in the photos she posted — they are clearly pictures of one of her classmates; in the school photos they often appear together, having both been involved in school dramatic productions. The girl of the same name was/is a writer, just like our online friend; this is mentioned by the school as one of her achievements. She had a high profile at school last year (her final year), was a prefect and something of a leader, and was obviously well thought of by her teachers. The girl belonging to the photos was apparently in the same class as the one belonging to the name.

So which one did we interact with? Or was it both, and they cooked it up between them? Did one steal the other’s identity, or part of it? Did someone else steal bits of both? It can happen. A young Aussie poet friend of mine — whom I know well in real life, I hasten to add — had her identity stolen a few years back by a crazed young woman who pretended online to be her, and stole and used her poems and other details. In that case the offender was traced, brought to justice and made to stop, but it left my friend traumatised for some time. In the present case, though, we are not aggrieved parties in the same way and there is no question of getting the police involved. However, identity theft is one possibility.

We don’t actually know who we were communicating with under that guise for those many months; could have been either of the two girls, either one secretly ripping off the other. Or maybe one of their classmates used aspects of them both. From the detailed knowledge shown, it would have to have been someone from the same class, take my word for it — or just possibly one of their teachers, though from the nature of the posts I think that less likely.

Putting together several people’s experiences with her, emails received, plus further research, I have uncovered so many lies and discrepancies that it has to have been a deliberate hoax. There is simply no way of avoiding that conclusion. We liked the person we thought we knew! — even felt great affection for her, enough to be intensely grieved at her untimely death. Therefore we have resisted believing she was false, but it must be so. Just the mere fact of a name belonging to one girl attached to photos of another points to deliberate deceit. No, it’s not a matter of transposed captions or anything like that. Many of them were photos of the one girl only, definitely presented as being of the other.

She was very convincing as to medical details, and struck just the right emotional tone in the posts after she supposedly became ill (no melodrama or anything like that). And she had built up a relationship with each of her online friends over long periods. Why???

Well, she is a young novelist, so perhaps she was exploring plot and the creation of character? By saying this, I acknowledge that I believe we were given the correct name and false photos. I believe it because she also posted her fiction and poetry online in the same community, with a connection between the two journals. But then, my real-life friend had her writing stolen and posted — under her real name but not by her real self — so it’s impossible to know for sure.

A girlfriend and I once engaged in a hoax, not meaning it maliciously. We both had poems we thought good enough to share, but so personal concerning other people that if we’d made them public under our real names it could have caused all kinds of upsets. Our approaches to poetry are similar enough that we thought we could get away with collecting them under the same fictitious name. She’s no techie, so I was the one who found a small blogging community, signed up as the created persona, and started posting.

The trouble with social networking is, you’re supposed to network. Nice people liked the poems, commented, which obliged me to comment back on their own stuff, and tried to make friends. I could either enter into full-scale deception, getting more and more entangled — which I didn’t, because I had neither the time nor inclination — or remain aloof to the point of rudeness, which I didn’t because I didn’t want to hurt nice people. Instead I closed the account. So much for that experiment!

I have been wondering if it was mere youth or actual mental disturbance which had our present hoaxer remain so unaware or indifferent about the hurt she was inflicting, letting people who cared about her imagine her dying so tragically. Then I remembered the leukemia story for the other group, and the request for a memorial page. Mental disturbance, I think.

Should it make me suspicious of all my other online friends? I don’t think so. Most people are fairly transparent and easy to track. She was trackable too, as it turned out — or at least, the person she claimed to be was — which is what revealed the deceptions.

Perhaps I should be angry, but so far not. When all’s said and done, although the truth (as far as we can guess it) is pretty creepy, it is still much better than an 18-year-old being dead of a brain tumour. I’m feeling kind of stupid with relief — or maybe shock. Also exhausted from the detective work. And I’m ready to let go of it all, in the conviction that we’ll never find out all the facts. She has stopped communicating. End of story, for us if not for her.

A long time ago I was married very briefly to a compulsive liar. After that was over, I realised there were stories he told that I was simply never going to know the truth of — maybe even he didn’t — and life was too short to continue banging my head on brick walls. I feel desperately sorry for a young girl who needs to create such deceptions, but she’s beyond my help.

I’m leaving the poems up on my poetry blog, though. They are good, and they sprang from genuine feeling at the time. ('No gain without pain'? Hey, no pain without gain!) But the accompanying photo has gone.

Postscript, a day later

This has been an education! I have now learned that this story is not an isolated incident but an example of a syndrome, sometimes known as Münchausen by Internet. If you Google that phrase, there is a lot of material.

Interview with Aussie writer, Helen Patrice

2012-01-12T16:49:00.084+11:00

Helen Patrice is the author of one of my favourite books, the verse novel A Woman of Mars, of which the acclaimed SF author Ray Bradbury says: 'Helen Patrice's poems are little love letters not only to the Red Planet but also to the sense of alien wonder that is so often missing from imaginative fiction and poetry. Bravo to her!'

She is also known for her columns in NOVA and Living Now (Australia) irregular appearances in Circle Magazine and Sage Woman (USA), and has had poems and articles in a variety of other publications —literary, magickal and mainstream. Currently she shares her poems with the private facebook group Free Verse Weekends.

As well, she is one of my best friends — but I would think highly of her writing anyway, I promise, and trust the same goes for the nice things she says (below) about mine. In fact, the appreciation of each other's writing caused the friendship, not the other way about.

I asked the questions I personally wanted answered, thinking that they would probably be the same ones to interest others.

Rosemary: I’ve long known you as a naturally gifted poet, columnist and blogger who has also written some lovely short stories. What form of writing did you start with, and how old were you then?

Helen: I was in primary school when I started writing, likely about nine years old. I know I was playing word games then, and forcing my best friend to play them with me. We’d select our favourite ten tv programmes, and take it in turns to write five lines of a story, each time adding in another show. A lot of fun. My friend noticed that I was pretty tough on character continuation, and following through a plot line. She didn’t care, but I sure did. If I mentioned Dr Who in the first five lines, I sure wasn’t going to just forget about him in line 55. It was a natural progression to start writing my own stories, and some fan fiction. By the end of primary school, I was showing my stories to the librarian, Dawn Bursey, who bless her, encouraged me. So, fiction was my arena for many years.

R: Was it always your goal to be a writer, as in your primary occupation, or did you have other career ideas when you were growing up?

H: From age nine, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Astronaut came in maybe a year earlier. I went so far as to apply to the air force when I was about to graduate high school, on the basis that NASA’s astronaut qualifications base was: American citizenship (I figured I could marry some Yank, no problem), air force training, and ten thousand hours of flying time. Sure, I could do all that. Several problems: I didn’t know any Americans, the air force didn’t want me, I wore glasses and that precluded flight training, and at that time, the air force didn’t let women fly the planes. Writer seemed easier after that. I never gave up hope however, and sent my resume to NASA once a year up until they retired the space shuttle programme. I can’t tell you how many rejection slips I had from them, telling me to go get a science degree.

R: How have you supported yourself while trying to ‘make it’?

H: Let’s see: checkout chick; public servant; leaf polisher for the public service; clerical work; teaching creative writing, tarot, belly dance, meditation, yoga, palmistry, and astrology; doing tarot readings; working in a crystal shop; integration aide; house cleaning; ghost writer; one dreadful night on a sex phone line; child care worker; professional declutterer; belly dancer. If there’s anything else, it’s been lost in the mists of my mind.

R: This is a digression, but I’m sure everyone else will want to know too — what was so dreadful about the sex line?

H: I put the kids to bed, and clocked onto the sex line. I was dressed in old pyjamas, and fluffy slippers, and had the ironing board set up. I had a set of headphones on, and within minutes, the first call came through, and I found myself telling the man that I was wearing black cut out lace knickers and bra, and that I was restless and hot. It was erotic auto-pilot, while the guy had a heavy breathing attack down the line at me. This went on for several hours. I got through the ironing, chopped up vegies for a casserole the next day, and then I started getting tired. I'm not a night owl. I had two small children who had to get to school and kinder in the morning. I was supposed to log off the sex line around 5am, and I knew I'd have to get my kids up around 7. It was 1am. I was tired. Some bloke phoned up, and wanted some ridiculous scenario, which I blathered on about. We were meant to keep the guys on the line as long as possible. The sex part was over with fairly quickly, and you moved on to building a fantasy life with them. Where you'd live, what sort of life you'd have, where you'd holiday, what sort of shower you'd have so he could peek in at you each morning, blah, blah, blah. I reached the end of my creativity, as I sat watching some evangelical tv show with the sound off. I wanted to go to bed. The guy on the phone wanted to know what I was doing right that minute. I sighed. "Sitting on the couch, watching religious tv," I said, and hung up. I phoned in, logged off, and never went back. I couldn't do it.

R: For much of your adult life you have been a single mother to two profoundly deaf children, one of whom is also autistic. I know something of how this has impacted your life; how has it affected you as a writer?

H: For many years, I didn’t write at all. The shell shock of it was profound, and I felt I had no voice any more, nothing to say that wasn’t the stuttered words ‘deaf’, ‘autism’, ‘help!’. When I did begin writing again, my foci had changed greatly. It was as though, at long last, I’d been touched by life. I’d been down in the mud where it gets gritty and real, and my characters had more to them, I’d seen the good and bad in people, and I’d seen the amazing bravery of my son, trying to be with us through the miasma of autism and hearing impairment. Finally, I wrote about it. I’ve written one unpublished memoir about my daughter’s hearing loss, up until age twelve when she received her cochlear implant. I’ve written poems about autism, and several articles. The memoir about my son is still to come, if I’m brave enough to write it. Sometimes, when my writing feels fragmented and doesn’t make sense, I can feel autism sitting in the back of my own head, watching, and I understand all over again how it must be for David.

R: How hard has it been to persist in (a) writing (b) trying to get published?

H: You’re speaking to someone who’s just announced dramatically on facebook that they are quitting writing, knowing full well that I’m only on hiatus. Persisting through everything has been both curse, and lifeline. I’ve felt dragged from my family by the urge to write, and dragged from writing by the guilt that pulls me back to parenting. When my brain happily rewired itself to move from fiction to poetry, apparently with no going back, I thought I’d lost said mind. I wondered what on earth was going on. I wanted to quit, sure that I’d gone mad, or that I’d just lost it completely. Then I saw that I’d been a poet all along, and that it was no wonder my short stories were so very short, and that my characters were light brush stroke sketches.

In terms of getting published, persistence and an unattractive thick skin help. I was once proud of my huge collection of rejection slips, declaring that they proved I was a working writer. After I had the kids, and suffered post-natal depression, I became very sensitive to criticism and couldn’t bear to look at the rejections or suffer too many. I stopped submitting.

I’m now happily medicated. I don’t mind saying this. I think clinical chronic depression is a bogeyman that needs to have the light of day shone on it. I have depression, have apparently suffered from it since my mid-teens. After I had the kids, it became chronic and very bad, and I never ‘picked myself up’. In 2008, I was diagnosed, and the doctor and I found the right pill, and I have not looked back since. I still have my bad times, but I know a lot more about managing them, and making allowances, and am slowly starting to submit again in volume.

Getting my book published was luck. I’d made no submissions of the manuscript. My girlfriend Marianne Plumridge thought the collection was good, and through her husband Bob, a well known science fiction artist, she knew publishers and editors. She showed it to the right one, and boom, a few days later, he said he was publishing it!

R: I was in total agreement with Marianne. I’m very glad that she had the contacts to do something about it, and that our judgment has been so beautifully vindicated. If I may back-track a bit, when did that rewiring of your brain happen? Was it recent? (I thought you wrote some charming short stories early on.)

H: I would estimate about eight years ago. My short stories kept getting shorter and shorter, with little characterisation. I was having less and less success in the traditional short story field, with a beginning, a middle and an ending, with plot, character, theme. I found myself honing in more and more on a single vision moment in a story and just wanting to tell that bit, with the rest as window dressing. Then I stopped writing for a couple of years, and found myself absolutely exhausted at the idea of building a short story, finding it way too much effort.

R: Sounds a bit like me as a novelist. The few times I’ve tried it, I’ve bored myself stupid very quickly. So, what happened next?

H: I had lunch with Earl Livings and bemoaned my non-writing status. He prompted me to get The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron off my bookshelf and actually do the 12 week programme to recover my creativity. Now, I'd had this book for a few years, read it and thought 'Yeah, yeah, sounds good, one day maybe'. The day had come. I started it, in the middle of winter, where the view out my bedroom window was grey concrete, a strip of clover grass about three feet wide, a dead lemon tree, and the grey back fence. I did my morning pages in bed each morning, exploring my depression(and getting the first inkling that perhaps I was chronically depressed and that this was perhaps not normal), exploring my ailing relationship, exploring what I might want from my life.

Then, out of nowhere, the poems started. Pouring out of me, sometimes three each morning, coming directly out of the morning pages. Once the twelve weeks finished, the poetry died for a little while, and so I attempted a short story that just died in the first page. Try as I might, I could not progress the story, and finally realised I didn't want to. I wanted to concentrate on a single moment in the story. So, I told that and had a paragraph from a short story. I messed around with it, trying to pull it out, like taffy. No go. It took weeks before I realised that it wanted to be a poem. So, my life as a poet began, and I remember sending you my monthly poetry output for your opinion.

R: It was mostly terrific stuff even then! Your natural aptitude seems to be for free verse, though I know you write haiku too. Apart from haiku, did you ever study form or did you just bypass it? (I always thought one needed a good grounding in form in order to write free verse well, but you appear to give the lie to that theory.)

H: I did do some study of form, under Jennie Fraine, at Frankston TAFE, back in 1988. I joined her poetry class and she took us through practice of various forms, before we moved to free verse. I was never much good at form, though, didn’t like the constrictions, and was relieved when, after one term, we could do as we liked. Every now and then, Rosemary, you’ll mention a form that sounds interesting and I’ll have a disastrous mess with it in my journal, before deciding all over again that ‘fuck this shit, it’s back to chopping up sentences’.

R: Your poetry is a lot more than merely chopping up sentences! You seem to have a sure instinct for line endings, natural rhythms and so forth. How much crafting do you do at the time of writing? (For myself, a so-called first draft might be more like a tenth, only it all happens as part of the initial creation.)

H: How much crafting do I do at the time of writing? Very little. I work with the breath when it comes to line endings, where I want the reader to pause. Or where I can see a play on words, or two possible meanings if I break a sentence where I do. Most of the poems you see on Free Verse Weekends are written on the site, as is. No work, beyond the initial idea, and wanting to say it. I think this is why most of my poems are short. That 'small river stone' of an idea that just has to be said economically. Sometimes, when I come to the page, or the group, I have no idea what I'm going to say, thinking 'surely this time I'm all tapped out', yet something appears. I can't say it's always good, but it's mostly first draft. I don't analyse too much what I do, for fear that if you analyse what is in the cake, it no longer tastes as nice.

R: I hate you. Well, no I don’t; I like playing with form sometimes, and wouldn’t want not to be able to. All the same, to get results like yours so easily … ! Despite your strengths as a poet, I always thought your great dream was to be a successful fiction writer. Do your recent verse novel, A Woman of Mars, and the new one in the pipeline satisfy that urge, or do you still long to get a prose novel published too?

H: My great dream WAS to have a prose novel published. I saw myself having written a best seller of some sort (who doesn’t, really?) and appearing on the Don Lane Show. I wanted to tell him that I too would like to punch James Randi out. Never happened. The Don Lane Show was cancelled, I never wrote the book, and then, last year, Don Lane himself passed away. I believe James Randi is still going strong, so there’s hope I might get to punch him out.

I have to admit that I’m simply not prepared to do the work in terms of a novel. I’ve written four novels now, all through NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where you write 50,000 words over the course of November). Chicklit, murder mystery set in Melbourne’s belly dance community, science fiction, dark urban fantasy. I’ve never rewritten any of them. Once I’ve told the story, I’ve told it, and have little interest in going back over it.

Rewrites, and the thought of line edits, and galley proofs make me want to be sick. So, unless I can produce a perfect novel in the first draft, it ain’t gonna happen. Not unless I get locked in a room for months on end with nothing else to do but rewrite my stuff.

A Woman of Mars does not quite satisfy that urge, but it will have to do.

R: At present you’re working on a ‘salacious memoir’ about the men in your life, and have begun a series of poems about them. Will this memoir be all in verse, or will it include prose passages too?

H: Oh, the prose part was just too hard. All this dreadful whiny, angsty stuff came out. In poems, not so much. I could cut to the chase, my perceptions of how it all was. So, now I have around 25 poems, with a few more to add from my files, and will likely end up with around 35 poems all up, to be put together in a chapbook, and then, if I get brave, perhaps marketed as an ebook. I doubt any publisher would be willing to put their hand up and say “Hell, yeah, sex poems from an unknown!”

R: Are you writing the memoir as catharsis for yourself, entertainment for others, or both?

H: All of that. I didn’t look on it as catharsis, but what a great thing it’s been to be as bitchy as I like, knowing that it’s first draft, knowing that I’ll change the names, knowing that considering how uncharitable I’ve been in some cases, the guys are not likely to put their hands up and say: “Hey that’s me in poem 24, hey, everyone, look, look what she said about me, I’m gonna sue!”. And, when I’ve shared the poems, there’s been a certain amount of giggling, and gasping.

R: What I’ve seen of it is often very funny, yet serious at the same time. I can hardly wait for the completed volume. You were recently chosen as one of only 12 poets to participate in a weekend workshop with the legendary Marge Piercy, whose work both you and I greatly admire. Was she formidable, inspiring, nurturing, all of the above ...?

H: Marge Piercy is my poetry goddess, and when I applied to the workshop, I doubted I’d get in, and was greatly surprised when she replied less than 24 hours later, in an email saying: “I want you, but CAN you get here?” I stared and stared at the screen, thinking ‘Holy crap, the Goddess emailed me!’ You betta believe I could get there, any way possible. I didn’t care if she lived in Outer Mongolia. Marge said come, and I went.

I was terrified before the workshop, wondering if I was THAT good, or THAT bad and Marge needed to tell me in person. “Hello, I really must tell you that you are crap, and to stop writing straight away. Please, do the universe a favour.”

When I found out that applications were in the hundreds, and that only 12 were chosen, I was gobsmacked.

Then, on the first day of the week-long workshop, I saw her in the foyer of the Seniors Centre, in Wellfleet. Short, stocky, a wild frizz of black hair, and, well, I have to say it, a rather dowdy outfit covered in cat hair. She has glaucoma and thus cannot see her clothes that well, and I daresay, even if she could, she would not give much of a damn.

She was lovely. Nurturing, direct, honest, and not formidable in any way, except in terms of her steel-trap mind which remembers everything it reads. Her knowledge is extraordinary, and it’s no wonder her poems are full of such beautiful detail. She knows the name for everything, and has the curiosity of a kitten. She is opinionated, passionate when she feels she has been wronged, and was gently encouraging of the only man in the workshop, joking on the first day that he was brave.

R: Were you the only non-American in this workshop?

H: I was indeed the only non-American. There were several from Alabama, a couple from around New York, one from Colorado, one from Minnesota, and oh, I can’t remember where else now. I do know that Melinda, who has the most delightful southern accent, would beg me to read anything from an English poet, in my ‘English’ accent. I sounded English? I don’t bloody think so! In turn, I wanted her to read just about anything.

R: What in particular did you gain from your attendance?

H: I think most writers go to workshops to find out if they’re any good. They want to hear that what they’re doing is not crazy person nonsense. I got a wide exposure to American poetry, and an introduction to ‘Poets and Writers’ magazine, which I’d not encountered until then, but is a marvelous tool for those wanting to publish in the States. I got reassurance that I was indeed a poet, and a pretty good one, which is nice to know. Since then, I’ve carried a little kernel of confidence inside me. Even now, when I’m feeling discouraged about the publishing side of things and feel it’s all too hard, I know that I am a good writer, and that I am just not appreciated. Does that sound martyred and wanky? Yes. It’s more that I’m a good writer, but just not willing to play the right games, curry favour, and network myself sick. I go to science fiction conventions, forget completely to schmooze editors and publishers and attend the right parties, and instead spend my time buying steampunk costumes, talking with random people, and acting the goat at the Baen Books room party.

R: Who are your favourite (a) poets (b) fiction writers?

H: You know, I hate this question, because it can depend on the day, the phase of the Moon, or whether or not the kitten is being nice to me. I will thus list the mainstays, and ignore who I might be passionately in love with this week.

Poets: Great Goddess Marge Piercy of course; Carol Ann Duffy for her marvellous ‘The World’s Wife’ collection of poems; Mary Oliver for seeing the sacred in the ordinary; Jennie Fraine for bringing Africa alive for me; yourself dear, for your wide vista of topics and for being both tough and gentle; Billy Collins for his humour and insight; Naomi Shihab Nye is a recent addition, as is Kim Addonizio.

Fiction: Connie Willis. I adore her screwball take on science fiction themes, as well as the heart she brings to some very clinical subjects. Arthur C. Clarke’s earlier works before he got into sequels. Asimov’s short robot stories. Nina Kiriki Hoffman is writing some wonderful fantasy that is gripping and human. I love Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde series, but she says there will be no more because they don’t sell enough. A pity.

R: I agree with you about quite a few of those! Honoured to be included, and fascinated to learn why. Thank you. Who are your biggest influences as (a) a poet (b) a prose writer?

H: As a poet, my biggest influences are Marge Piercy, Rosemary Nissen-Wade, Carol Ann Duffy, and the writing books of Natalie Goldberg.

As a prose writer, I have to look back to Erma Bombeck, Charles de Lint sometimes, Connie Willis, and, of all people, John Birmingham. Whenever I get jammed up, I go read ‘He Died With A Felafel in His Hand’ and realize that anything goes.

R: Well, thank you again, for putting me in such company! Certainly both Piercy and Goldberg are among my influences too, and I also love Bombeck and de Lint. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

H: Write, write, write. Get off facebook, get off twitter, myspace, angry birds, and whatever else is holding you in thrall. Put down the Wii, and go to the computer or the blank page and start. It doesn’t matter what. It doesn’t have to be good. What it has to be is words on the page. Write everything – poetry, fan fiction, prose, snatches of plays, whatever. Have a go at everything, hold nothing back, be brave. And when you’re not at the page, get out into the world, stand still, be silent, observe and ask ‘Why?’ Wait for your own answer.

Read voraciously, and not just what you think you’ll like. I used to go to the library and if the author I wanted wasn’t available, I’d often pick the next book along, on the off-chance that maybe a typo in filing meant that Lawrence and Laurence were the same person and I’d find more goodness. I did find goodness, but also some icko stuff as well, and I learned from that too.

R: Good advice! Where can people (a) read your work online (b) buy your book?

H: NOVA magazine, published by Sunrise Publishing, have a fine backlog of my articles. I was their ‘centrefold’ for around five years, writing an article a month for them on their theme. Some of them can be found on the NOVA website.

I also have my own website, which is run by my friend Yvonne Hintz. There should be some new stuff up on there shortly.

As for my book, ‘A Woman of Mars: poems of an early homesteader’, it is available through PS Publishing, Stanza Press, in the UK. If you go to the site and have a hunt around on there, you should find it. [I've linked direct to their Poetry page. - R.] For those in Australia, I also have a number of copies for sale, and those interested can contact me via my website. $25 excludes postage. Cover by Bob Eggleton, and back cover blurb by none other than Ray Bradbury.

R: I'm very glad to learn of the NOVA website. The magazine has sometimes been hard to get in the small country town where I live. I'm now having a lovely time catching up with all your articles.

Yes, I know this post is about Helen, not me — but the interviewing did take up quite a lot of my life this week, sending questions and answers back and forth, with answers leading to new questions, and so on.

Reunion Arouses Old Memories, Creates New

2011-12-26T17:57:00.005+11:00

(Due to interruption by xmas, not posted until Monday.)

Ruth entered our lives just before Christmas 2002. Our friend Wendy emailed from Thailand, where she was living at the time, to say a delightful young Irish woman she knew was to be visiting Australia and wanted to connect with me, both as Reiki Master and Pagan wise woman.

She turned up, we all clicked instantly, and mutually decided she should board with us rather than looking for other accommodation. A resourceful lass, she soon found waitressing work in the area, and — being pretty, charming, and very nice —attracted the interest of several young men.

She was herself a Reiki Master in Tera Mai Reiki, which was unfamiliar to me. We swapped initiations and training. She stayed several months with us, and joined in our magickal circle.

Then we phoned our friend Ray in Perth to wish him Happy Christmas, only to be told by his parents he had died from a heart condition. They had not known where to contact us.

‘I don’t suppose you want his house?’ they asked.

Ray had always said, ‘There’s a house here if you want it.’ We hadn’t taken him seriously. It transpired that it was built on his parents’ property under conditions which did not allow it to be rented out. Ray had met a woman overseas whom he married, and built the house for her — but the marriage was brief and he lived in it alone until he died. Had we taken him up on his offer, he would have been happy to move in with his parents.

A rent-free home was tempting, now that we understood the situation. Ray’s mother said, ‘I only want someone to water the roses’ in return for the accommodation. Ray had planted a lot, as a hobby, and it was now her job to keep them watered. Adding to the attraction was the fact that my favourite aunty and uncle had moved to Perth many years previously and I had not seen them since. Now they were in their eighties. My aunt had been a ‘second mother’ to me at a time when I badly needed one.

Ruth said, ‘You might never see them again. I really think you should take this opportunity. If I pay you enough rent in advance, you might be able to get cheap flights, and I could look after the house and the cats for you while you’re gone.’

So that’s what we did. Cheap flights there and back meant we would have to stay for three months — time enough to catch up with all the relatives, including various cousins there, and to see if we wanted to move there permanently. As it turned out, we didn’t. We enjoyed Perth very much, got on well with Ray’s parents, and had a lovely catch up with the rellies. We even fluked being there for Writers’ Week, attended all the free sessions, and made a new writer friend we’re still in touch with.

But after all, the lifestyle wasn’t for us. Eventually we missed the east coast and our friends and activities here. Also, we were concerned about security of tenure in Ray’s house if we burned our bridges. His parents suggested putting something in their wills to cover this, but we said, ‘What about your other son? Hadn’t you better ask him his wishes before you do that?’ He was married and living in another suburb, but it turned out that he would like to inherit both houses after his parents’ death, to use one for his home and the other for his business. In fact, when we phoned last year to see if they had survived local bushfires, he was already in residence in Ray’s house, and busy hosing the place. I imagine, as his parents got older, it made sense for him to be on the spot to give them a hand.

After we retuned east, Ruth stayed on a while longer, which gave us time to cement the friendship. She went out briefly with two of her suitors in turn. With the third, things developed into a bit of a romance. He was very keen, but by then she was getting messages from Des, an old boyfriend whom she had actually grown up with in Ireland, begging her to join him in the United States where he was now working. As extra incentive, he said he could get her waitressing work and she could earn very good money in the wealthy resort where he was based. She was torn, but decided that if she didn’t go, she’d never know for sure which man to choose. (That in itself probably indicated that she was lukewarm about the Aussie bloke.)

Once she got there, it was a foregone conclusion. We got emails telling us what a wonderful man Des had become, so thoughtful, so charming, so witty.... The Aussie bloke, an avocado farmer, came round to our place one day to return a book we’d lent him. It was about the author’s spiritual experiences. He said he’d liked it all right until it came to the part where she was communicating with insects to leave her garden crops alone.

‘Only Jesus Christ can do that!’ he said. (Perhaps he had a vested interest in thinking so; the local fruit growers feel they MUST shoot the local birds to protect their crops. What if they were wrong?) I realised this would never have been the right man for Ruth, with her Reiki energy healing and her understanding of nature spirits etc.

She and Des married and now have a daughter, Jasmine, two and a half years old. For the last couple of years they have been living in Vietnam, where Des has been working in construction. This Christmas Ruth decided to bring the family to Australia — closer than Ireland and a lot warmer this time of year. They visited friends in Newcastle, spent some time on the Gold Coast, and are now at Kingscliff, not far from here. They will be in Sydney on New Year’s Eve, watching the fireworks, before flying back to Vietnam.

So, after eight years, we met up again with our lovely friend when she and her husband took us out for lunch on Christmas Eve. We finally met Des, every bit as nice as she said he was, and Jasmine, who was slightly shy and completely delightful. Des told us he was loving Australia and the Aussies — everyone so friendly and helpful.

We went to the Tumbulgum Tavern, which overlooks the water at the confluence of the Tweed and Rous Rivers. We feasted on massive servings of grilled barramundi for Andrew and me, beer battered John Dory for Ruth, and an even huger plate of steak for Des. They said that huge steaks and fresh fish are hard to get in Vietnam.

It was as if we had seen Ruth only yesterday — except that, at 40, I think she is even more beautiful now. It was as if we had seen Des only yesterday too: we were so immediately at ease with each other. They drove us back home and regretfully took their leave as Jasmine needed a rest and they still had to do food shopping for xmas. But with such a strong connection confirmed, somehow we couldn’t feel sad. Besides, they promised to return!

Writng 'Small Stones'

2011-12-11T10:22:00.006+11:00

Would you like a 2012 with more colour, more juice, more clarity, more deliciousness?

During January, Kaspa and Fiona Robyn from ‘Writing Our Way Home’ will be encouraging you to pay attention to one thing every day and write it down.

You don’t have to be a writer to take part. You just need to have three minutes spare a day, and a notebook or a blog, and the desire to slow down and fall in love with the world a day at a time.

Do jump here to find out more, and Kaspa and Fiona hope to see you in the river. Here’s how last year’s small-stoners found the experience:

“I have to tell you, readers, I have loved writing a small stone every day for the last 31 days. It’s the most glorious exercise in mindfulness, in pulling yourself into this moment, and if you haven’t tried it yet please give it a go, if only for a week.”
~Rachel Hawes, writer of small stones

“My father was recently put into Hospice care and dealing with the imminent loss and pain and joy of his journey has become sweeter for me because I am paying attention. That is no small thing.”
~Lisa Haight, writer of small stones

“…I keep finding that [writing a small stone] doesn’t eat up time or mental space; on the contrary, time stops and a new space is created.”
~Jean Morris, writer of small stones

“Writing small observations daily was like a spiritual experience for me. I felt happy, joyous and free. I looked forward to my daily meditation. As a result, I feel awakened and alive; and I am truly thankful.”
~Laurie Kolp, writer of small stones

As for me, I've done this before, loved it like mad, and will be doing it again this January, at my Stones for the River blog. You're all invited to read and comment.

Flo has grown

2011-12-05T23:51:00.003+11:00

As one would expect. :) She will be turning three in February. In the same month she'll be getting a little brother or sister (and also a new cousin).

We had a lovely visit with her and her parents yesterday, sitting on their extensive verandah, enjoying the trees on their property, and being fed on organic pasta, home-made pesto, and home-grown salad.

The tiger I bought Flo many months ago was a hit. The Universe knows what it's doing, and the timing was just right. Her parents told us she started making Big Cat roaring noises about two days ago! (No, none of them knew what I was bringing.)

She remembered us, although she hadn't seen us in a long time, and chatted to us about things — her necklace, a dead spider, the fairy wings she wore when she was flower girl at a wedding recently.

As for her parents, we all just picked up where we left off, as you do with some friends, and it was as if we'd seen them only the day before. But we vowed it would not be so long next time!

We are going to see Flo!

2011-12-04T00:05:00.001+11:00

Also her parents, Dean and Tess.

Flo is our Youngest God-daughter. She was born in February 2009 and for some time we saw a lot of her, and of our good friends, her parents. Life circumstances change — e.g. we moved house — and it’s been months now since we visited each other. Last summer, every time we tried to plan it, it would either be a stinking hot day or one that was pouring with rain, and we’d all decide to stay home instead. But tomorrow, finally, it’s happening! We’ve charged up the battery in the camera. The toy tiger I bought her ages ago is ready by the door. And I’m off to bed now to get some sleep, so in the morning I’ll be fresh and ready for the drive.

Here are some pictures from our last visit:

Formal Versifying

2011-12-01T11:51:00.007+11:00

I’ve been going through one of my phases of, ‘Who am I kidding? I’m a terribly bad poet!’ I’m told it happens to all of us. My present phase was initially triggered by seeing the movie Camino, which I loved. When someone asked me about it, I began by saying, ‘It was complex.’ It was, and that was one of the things I loved about it. It dealt with a complex situation and didn’t attempt to over-simplify, but to lay out all the complexities for our view. This interested me. For years now I have been aiming for simplicity in my poetry, training myself by practisng haiku and tanka. I realised I’d like to get back to some complexity now.

Then I began looking through this year’s work with the idea of putting together a little collection for xmas presents to family and friends. I was shocked to see how prosey my language has often become. That is not necessarily a side-effect of striving for simplicity, clarity and accessibility — but in my case it’s obviously a danger I have to watch out for. Time for the wheel to turn! I don’t want obscurity, would still like to be clear and accessible, but just ... well ... not so straightforward as to risk dullness and banality.

As I don’t happen to have any complex ideas burning for expression, I decided I’d better try for complexity of form. I find this also leads to heightened language. Restrictions can act as a sort of crucible! If I do enough experimenting with form, perhaps that language will extend to any free verse I might be inspired to create meanwhile.

It’s not an absolutely new thing for me. I have always played with form, whilst preferring free verse and using that most of the time. Now I’m going to focus mainly on form for a while. I don’t know how long — until I get sick of it, I suppose. I’m sure there’ll be some free verse as well, now and then.

The prompts at the wonderful dVerse poetry community are helpful. Some are for specific forms, others suggest particular approaches and techniques which I can use to the same end. I think particularly of a recent prompt on the technique of conflation. The responses to these prompts indicate that there are plenty of others out there who are interested in playing with form, not just me. Some are beginners; some are very accomplished poets indeed. Many of the participants also frequent the (similar) Poets United and imaginary garden with real toads sites.

I was surprised, then, on suggesting to the Free Verse Weekends group on facebook that we might start another group for formal verse, to discover that it is evidently not an activity the excellent poets there usually engage in. (Except for haiku and tanka; many of those same poets are in the facebook Haiku on Friday and Tanka on Tuesday groups as well.) Several expressed themselves willing to give form a go, but I was more looking to see if there was an existing need/desire. Apparently not. So I’ll just continue to play at dVerse etc.

Six Word Saturday — November 19, 2011

2011-11-19T07:48:00.012+11:00

Loving my new Kobo; re-reading Kipling.

I got the Kobo for my birthday, from my Firstborn, who always knows what I will love even when I don't tell him. In this instance I sort of told him when he was here for a visit recently, by dint of asking his opinion on the iPad. When he found out that all I really wanted that for was to use as an e-book reader, he suggested the iPad was a much too expensive option, both to buy and run. He looked up e-readers online and said, 'If they were cheaper I'd be happy to buy you one, but at that price ...' and pointed me at The Book Depository for cheap printed books.

So when my birthday present arrived, I accused him (in a thrilled kind of way) of being sneaky. He said:

I got lucky. They had been off the market for a while (presumably because of Borders and A&R going under), but randomly my housemate spotted them at JB HIFI and on the day I went in to check them out, they were on special. So I figured the time was right :-)

Indeed it was!

To my delight, it came already loaded with 101 books, described as 'classics' — and room for thousands more. I was amused to note that those already supplied ranged from Irish fairy stories to the Communist Manifesto! Even more interestingly, they included The Iliad and Anna Karenina, which I (shame on me!) still haven't read. Now I can. In fact have begun on The Iliad; still getting through the scholarly introductions, which are rather heavy going but I am interested to read them anyway. (I'm now on the one by Pope, reprinted in this edition, which is more fun than the contemporary intro.)

Then Firstborn reminded me of the existence of Project Gutenberg, where books out of copyright may be downloaded free. Whoopee! (I discovered that the books the Kobo came with must have been acquired there.) I immediately replenished my Dumas and Bronte collections, which had become depleted over years of moving house; and I added lots of Kipling.

There, see, my wicked stepmother did do something good for me — she had Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies on her bookshelves and I was allowed to borrow them. So I've been in love with them since I was 15. The stories are good, but it's the interspersed poems I've remembered all this time. Ever since I was 15 I have been able to quote the whole of The Looking Glass (Queen Bess was Harry's daughter!). Let's see, that's 57 years.

I interrupted The Iliad to re-read Puck of Pook's Hill, which I have done, and now I'm halfway through Rewards and Fairies. It makes me tingle all over and curl up my toes with pleasure.

Note: I discovered Six Word Saturday via a fun blog called Kylie's Kreative Play Space. Click on the image at the top of this post to go to the source, at ShowMyFace. It's one of those participatory things: if you decide to play, you can leave a link for others to read your six word posts. (You can expand on the six words as I've done, post photos, or just leave it at that — whatever. I'm now going to repost just my six-word heading as my facebook status.) Because I live in Australia, I'm always going to post a little ahead of the link for the week going up at the home site.

Changing My Mind-Set

2011-11-09T23:05:00.001+11:00

(Following from previous post.)

I’m about to turn 72. I’m sure it’s good for my health to finally adopt the habit of a daily nap, as well as resuming an old habit that had lapsed, of meditating daily. I’m sure it’s even better for me to have shifted from the frantic, stressed, ‘I must try and finish this before I get kicked off the net’ mind-set. My new resolution means that now, whenever access grinds to a halt (8:10 this morning) I calmly turn off the wireless modem and do other things, either on or off the computer — instead of struggling indefinitely, trying all the little tricks I’ve learned to get back online for 5 minutes, 2 minutes....

However the late-night plan hasn’t helped my internet access problem. That has now become unstable even after midnight! But Monday this week I had a smooth run until lunchtime. (It felt like Christmas.) And on Tuesday it lasted until 9 am. So the new plan is to get to bed at a decent hour and get up earlier in the morning. 6.15 is usual, when the cats wake us up for breakfast. Perhaps I’ll try 5.

Changing My Lifestyle

2011-11-06T01:54:00.006+11:00

Our internet access is atrocious. We live in a wireless only area on the border of a new estate with a fast growing population. The networks get severely overloaded. It was all right the first six months we were here, then we had problems and bought a signal booster. Six months after that we needed a bigger and better signal booster. Down the track again, we had to get our handyman friend to come and mount it on the roof for us. By now our access is worse than ever. We can get online early in the day and late at night. It used to be that we had a clear go before 8 am and after 10pm; now it's more like before 7am and after midnight.

Sometimes there is intermittent access during the day, but very unpredictable. We can get kicked off without notice, and maybe only get on for a few minutes anyway. Or it is agonisingly slow. Or we can get our email but no Skype, or vice-versa. Or I can read other people's blogs but can't see my own. But mostly we just don't have daytime access.

The reason is that we are 'too far from the exchange' — but this doesn't mean geographically. It is to do with the length of the old copper cables, which were laid long before there was anyone living here. Because of the Government's National Broadband Network roll out of fibre optic cable, Telstra is not going to upgrade the copper cable network any more; it would be a waste of money.

We seriously considered moving house. But we really don't want to. I think we'd be lucky to find again such a combination of beautiful views, safe street for the cats, proximity to town and sufficiently spacious unit. And even if the Housing Department would agree, it might be ages before they found somewhere suitable. We'd still need to find some short term solution to our problem.

So, after a long discussion with Andrew, and consulting my heart, my Tarot cards and my logic, I found the short term solution and we decided to apply it long term and save all the bother of trying to move again.

Simple really. Andrew usually has an afternoon nap. If I join him, and also make sure to meditate daily for deep relaxation, I'll be able to stay up after midnight and use the internet when it's actually working. I did this when I worked the psychic lines from midnight to 4am; I can do it again.

I was thinking all along that there must be an underlying reason for this problem. What was the lesson the Universe was trying to teach me? The cards suggested I surrender to the situation, that it would give me more spiritual balance, and that I needed to get out in nature more and spend more time interacting affectionately with Andrew.

Yes, I remember that when we first moved here, before we had our internet reconnected, we had a lovely time without it! It certainly will be less stressful interrupting a spot of weeding or dusting to help Andrew with something than it is to be interrupted while trying to upload a photo to a blog or perform an online banking transaction, racing in case of losing connection any minute.

So here's to the new regime. Now I must let all my friends know that in future, if they need to get in touch with me first thing in the morning, they should please use the phone.

Remain in Light, by Collin Kelley

2011-10-25T11:09:00.001+11:00

Regular readers may recall my interview with poet/editor/author Collin Kelley. His new novel, Remain in Light, is now available as an ebook from Smashwords, and will be available in print in January.

I, of course, couldn't wait for the printed copy and grabbed the ebook. I have just reviewed it for Smashwords, and this is what I said:

This is an exciting novel which enthralled me from start to finish. It makes a great sequel to its predecessor, Conquering Venus, and can stand alone too. The characters are vivid and memorable, the plot carried me along, and the mysteries were resolved beautifully. It’s one of those books that you can’t stop reading fast to see what happens next, all the while wishing you would never come to the end and have to stop reading. The story seems so complete now that I can’t imagine where the projected third book of the trilogy will take us. But I have no doubt the author’s imagination is up to it. I can hardly wait.

Celebrating Australian Poets

2011-10-19T00:15:00.001+11:00

At Poets United there’s a weekly series called I Wish I’d Written This, which has treated us to some wonderful poems. The poet who started it has reluctantly resigned due to other commitments, and I’m the new presenter. Initially I’m going to be sharing the work of Australian poets — brilliant poets whose work is too little known outside Australia. The only Australian poets the rest of the world seems to have heard of are Banjo Patterson and Les Murray. Both of them are worth hearing of, but they’re by no means the whole story.

So if you love to read good poems and would like to encounter wonderful poets you didn’t know before, you can start this coming Friday and return every Friday thereafter. Eventually I’ll include work by poets of other nationalities too, but for the next six months or so you’ll be reading lots of lovely Aussies.

While you’re there, do look around. This isn’t the only interesting series to read at Poets United. And then there are the writing prompts....

Food — Feast or Famine #BAD11

2011-10-16T09:08:00.004+11:00

I think I should be writing something deep and serious, about the evils of all the hunger in the world today. Like everyone else, I have looked at those television images of the Somalian famine victims, the wizened babies and huge-eyed mothers; I have listened to accounts of the shortage of medicines, the crowding in the refugee camps, the unsanitary conditions, the spread of disease (as if starvation wasn’t enough)…. I say prayers, I send Reiki energy. Sometimes I give money, not often and not much, in the hope that ‘every little helps’.

This Pension Day, I overspent on food. I thought I should try Coles online shopping instead of lugging numerous heavy bags up my front steps. I found it tricky to make the selections, forgot half the items we needed, and ended up doing an in-person shop as well. There was of course a delivery fee — not exorbitant, but with our budget every dollar counts. And it’s only with in-person shopping on the day that I can take advantage of all the in-store specials. You have to be there on the day, and you have to get there early.

Our fragile internet connection doesn’t help! I can’t just log on whenever I like and expect it to work. — another reason I can’t grab those specials online. Then, I often have to go into town and use the bank’s computer to get my online bill-paying handled. And this time I must have got kicked offline in mid-transaction while attempting it at home. I ended up having a direct debit refused for lack of funds, and being charged a dishonour fee. I had actually put the money in the right account in good time — I thought. One way and another, we found ourselves with a houseful of food, some of it superfluous (I forgot I already had three cartons of olive oil spread) and almost no money — $21 to last the rest of the fortnight. OK, so we didn’t have to spend it on food, but there are other things. Petrol, for instance.

These idiotic problems, largely self-inflicted, are a far cry from true hardship. I was able to ask my son for a handout to tide us over, and he obliged. We do have plenty of food in the house, even a bit too much (though we will use it) and we experienced our temporary shortage of funds with a roof over our heads and a comfortable bed to sleep in. We even have computers.

The Somalian people starving to death don’t have any such luxuries. But will writing blogs on the subject really help them? Not this blog; I wouldn’t have a clue — beyond prayers, Reiki and the odd bit of money. Feeling guilty about it is not going to be much help either.

What the famine victims do for those of us in affluent societies is to make us feel better by comparison. Luckier than them. Blessed indeed by the accident of having been born where we were. It’s a selfish response, yes, but perhaps an appropriate one. If we can’t assuage all the hunger in the world, at least we can be grateful for the food we have. We can celebrate it!

So, instead of waffling on any further, let me share with you one of my favourite food poems. It’s by my online friend Leigh Spencer, whose poems I adore. Despite the comical downturn at the end, this one is inherently celebratory. Many thanks to Leigh for graciously giving me permission to use it.

Secret Ingredient (for Kopitkis)

Bubbe's recipe

and I slaved all day

Ketoffle (potatoes)

boiled just so

"mit bloise a bissel zaltz"

(with just a little salt)

Perfect peak in the flour

with golden suns

of perfectly separated egg yolks

setting between

Mash

only by hand!

Form loaves,

then slice and boil

'til they float

Saute the sweet yellow onions

in a sach (a LOT) of pure olive oil

Sit back and smell home

and childhood

Add the floating potato dumplings

to the onions

until everything is golden brown

and comforting as Bubbe's hand

moving the hair from your face

In the pan,

paste with onions

shape unrecognizable

heroic measures prove

sadly unsalvageable

The dogs agree

as they run from this

failed Polish delicacy

Trash can alone

feasts

while the chef

homesick and hungry

cries

"These kopitkis taste like dreck (shit)!"

— Leigh Spencer

Growing up in Tasmania

2011-10-10T09:33:00.015+11:00

I wrote a poem which mentioned a childhood morning at my grandparents' home, The Orchard House, in Spreyton, Tasmania. People in other parts of the world are often fascinated by the mention of my birthplace, particularly Americans. Apparently there is a funny US TV show about a Tasmanian Devil. (Although I haven't seen it, it sounds as if it bears about as much relation to the real thing as Wile E. Coyote does to actual coyotes.) Anyway, one of the American readers of my poetry bog has just asked: ''Tasmania? Literally? I never knew anyone from Tasmania! Do tell...' My reply went on so long that I moved it over here:

Ha ha, yes literally. Last time I was in America, I found that many people thought it was a fictional place! It's an island at the south-east tip of Australia, and in its own right constitutes one State of Australia (sometimes called the Island State). The climate is temperate, with cold winters. I grew up in the city of Launceston in the north, where the North Esk and South Esk join to form the river Tamar.

My grandparents owned orchards in what was then the tiny hamlet of Spreyton, now a suburb of the city of Devonport on the north-west coast, which was then a small town. Tasmania used to be known as the Apple Isle, and my grandparents grew mostly apples — including varieties one never sees any more — as well as a number of other fruits. It was a magickal place to spend a childhood, and nowhere more magickal than my grandparents' property. The island still has unspoiled areas of great scenic beauty — though, like everywhere, there is now a constant battle between environmentalists and developers.

I left when I was 15 for family reasons. It broke my heart — but I ended up spending my late teens in the city of Melbourne, living with a wonderful aunt and attending the University of Melbourne on mainland Australia, and in hindsight I think that was better. Tasmania was too insular and conformist to have given me the adolescence I needed.

I won't live in Tasmania again — far too cold for me these days, and even then — but it's always the deep home in the heart. One reason I like the small town where I live now is that, although very different in climate and sensibilities, in some ways it reminds me strongly of the Launceston of my youth. I still think of myself as 'Taswegian' — an in joke: what we call ourselves and each other, rather than the correct 'Tasmanian'. The place itself is affectionately called 'Tassie' (pronounced 'Tazzie') even by those who have never lived there.

Tasmanians refer to the rest of Australia as 'the mainland' and privately believe it is all much inferior to our small State, which is separated from the rest by a wild stretch of water called Bass Strait. Mainlanders, on the other hand, sneer at Tasmanians for having two heads, a reference to our supposed inbreeding — but it's all good-humoured really. However we don't find it amusing when cartographers (so often!) leave Tasmania right off the map.

The island has a distinctive shape, which leads audiences at Australian strip shows to exhort the performers: 'Show us yer map of Tasmania!'

Just for the record, I am not fond of Tasmanian Devils. While I hope they are not rendered extinct by the dreadful disease they are subject to at present, I have never been able to warm to them; in fact I consider them detestable little creatures.

#BAD (Blog Action Day)

2011-10-05T07:57:00.011+11:00

Blog Action Day rolls around again on October 16th, which is also World Food Day, so the topic of course is FOOD. I have registered this blog and also my poetry blog The Passionate Crone. I hope to persuade the other members of WordsFlow to be in it too.

In case anyone hasn't caught up with Blog Action Day in the past, it's one day a year when bloggers all around the globe focus on one topic that we feel needs attention called to it. In the past the topic has been chosen by vote; this year, because of the coincidence of the date, it's already decided.

How one treats the topic is up to the individual blogger. How I'm going to approach it, I don't yet know, but I'm going to have fun thinking about it.

I know that whenever I give 'food' or 'eating' as topics in writing workshops, they're very inspirational! Food is primal, basic to our survival and therefore a great source of pleasure. Hunger is painful. Starvation is fatal. There are people in the world experiencing hunger and even famine right now. Oh yes, there's lots to write about!

Fame At Last!

2011-09-16T00:47:00.000+10:00

Recently I joined a site called Poets United, which offers all sorts of treats for blogging poets.

Much to my surprise and delight, they have just interviewed me in the Life of a Poet series. So if you want to know more about what makes me tick...

'River of Stones' — the Process

2011-07-15T16:38:00.007+10:00

I’m participating in this month’s ‘a river of stones’ over at my Stones for the River blog. I did it in January too, with great joy, and intermittently between then and now. This time around, I’m noticing more about the process, probably because my husband has joined in this time and his approach is different from mine. Well for one thing, I’m a poet and choose to write my small stones in verse; he’s a story-teller, whether in fiction or memoir, and naturally seeks to make stories out of his small stones. But it’s more than that.

I love his writing, so what I’m about to say isn’t a criticism of that — but I notice he has real trouble simply paying attention to the world around him. He produces lovely pieces that don’t end up on his blog because they’re not actually small stones. They are diary entries, records of events and the way he feels about them. He talks, for instance, of running into a couple of old friends in town yesterday. After reading what he wrote, I know that this event happened and who the people were, what he felt about the exchange, and a little of what was said between them. I know nothing of the surroundings, or what the people looked like, or how their voices sounded — no description. The ‘small stones’ idea is all about getting outside oneself and noticing the world around us. I think it’s OK to bring oneself in if necessary, but from the outside, dispassionately observed. He manages it, but it’s often a struggle.

Back in January Kaspalita, who co-founded the river of stones, posted a piece on just this. It seems many people have the same difficulty. I don’t seem to have quite as much trouble with it, and I put that down to a few years of attempting haiku, tanka and other short forms which train one to pay attention to the world. However I worry that I‘m ‘doing it wrong’ in a different way. Although there isn’t any obligatory length, I keep thinking mine are too long this time. I was convinced that I wrote much shorter ones in January, until I went back and had a look. No, they’re about the same.

I notice, too, that both my husband and I keep falling into the significance trap. What do I mean by that? I’ve been in a long-term writers’ support group (often by email) with Jennie Fraine and Leah Kaminsky for — good heavens! — 20 years. We are devoted to what we call ‘the anti-significance factor’. One of the earliest things we identified was that trying for deep significance is death to poetry. Or, as my friend Philip Martin used to remark, people don’t like to be buttonholed by a poem and told what to think and feel. Personally, if I try to write something deep and meaningful, it paralyses me, whereas if I just play with words or forms I produce poems — sometimes even deep and meaningful ones. It’s essential to remember that art is play. I think, with a small stone, the thing itself is what matters; no need to weight it down with any extra meaning. But human beings are very good at trying to add extra significance to everything, even the simplest things.

Difficult or not, I think the task is worthwhile, not only for the writing it can produce but even more so to have us engage with the world around us. It even led to me watering my geraniums, which badly needed it, because I stopped to take a good look at them.

Achievements of a writers' group

2011-07-08T18:52:00.002+10:00

I'm the facilitator of WordsFlow, a writers' group that meets weekly at Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre. I used to live at Pottsville and am now a half hour's drive away.

We have our own WordsFlow blog. I'd love to draw your attention to the three most recent posts: an article taking an affectionate look at the group members, by Eddie Blatt; a poem by Nan Doyle which has been widely aired on Australian radio and which listeners fall in love with, and an account by me of our recent presentation of a new computer to an emerging writer from a nearby town.

Collin Kelley Interview

2011-07-04T21:10:00.032+10:00

Collin Kelley, from Atlanta, Georgia, is poet, novelist, playwright and journalist. He also has a widely read blog, Modern Confessional, which is both entertaining and informative.

We met in Texas in 2006 when we were both featured guests at the annual Austin International Poetry Festival, and have kept in touch online ever since.

I’m mad about his poetry and own all his poetry books so far. I think he’s a master of free verse and I’m in awe of his technique. Above all, he gets me emotionally every time, whether with wry humour, piercing social criticism or haunting love poems.

In novels I love the unexpected, things I can’t second-guess. Usually I can; therefore I seldom read novels any more. But I did read Collin’s first novel, Conquering Venus. I even bought it. I probably would have bought it anyway because he’s a pal, but I also hoped that this would be a novel I’d actually enjoy, as I like his other writing so much. Sure enough, I loved it. Not boringly predictable, it nevertheless feels ‘right’. It’s the first part of a trilogy; I’m looking forward to the other volumes.

I’m no novelist myself, and don’t want to be. Few poets are. Australians David Malouf and Roger McDonald have managed it successfully, and Americans Marge Piercy and Margaret Attwood are prolific and brilliant in both forms. But it’s rare, so I was intrigued by Collin’s successful venture. He kindly agreed to be interviewed as follows.

SnakyPoet: Why did you decide to branch out from poetry to novels?

Collin Kelley: I always wanted to write novels. I made a few attempts in the 80s and early 90s, but they never went anywhere. In 1995, a trip to London and Paris gave me the framework for Conquering Venus and I was finally able to complete a novel that I thought had substance and might interest readers.

SP: So how long did it take you to write?

CK: Conquering Venus actually started as a screenplay in 1995. I wrote it in about three weeks. In 1996, I had an agent who tried to sell the screenplay in Hollywood, and while all the producers who looked at it liked the story they said it was a big budget art film and no studio would fund it. My agent said I should turn the screenplay into a novel, so I did. I worked on the novel for about three years off and on until it was completed in 2000. From 2000 until the book was finally published in 2009 was a series of agents, contests and assorted publishing wankers who made lots of promises they never kept.

SP: Which is the more satisfying kind of writing for you, poetry or fiction — or are they just different, and equally fulfilling?

CK: I like the immediacy of poetry — the economy of language and the challenge of putting across a feeling or emotion in as few words as possible. With fiction it’s more of a long game, but I try to incorporate the techniques of poetry into my novels as well. I never wanted to be anything but a writer, so the act of writing satisfies me immensely. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to make a living as a writer.

SP: I think all poets would agree that making poems is a thing we can’t not do. Do you find that this now applies to your novel-writing too?

CK: I think so. When I write fiction, I read poetry and when I write poetry, I tend to read more fiction. I already have the outline for the third book in The Venus Trilogy, I’m sequencing a collection of poetry and I plan to start working on a memoir about my misadventures on my many visits to London. I even have an idea for a sci-fi novel.

SP: Wow, you’re running hot! I definitely want to read all those books too. Do you find the novel sells better than the poetry books?

CK: I’ve definitely sold more copies of Conquering Venus than any of my poetry collections, but here in the States if you sell a couple hundred copies of a poetry collection then it’s considered a success. By that measure, I’ve been successful. Better To Travel has sold about 1,000 copies and my chapbook, Slow To Burn, sold out its 300 copy run in a just a year or so. Seven Kitchens Press will release a second edition in August, which is really exciting.

SP: Yes, it is! Where/how can people acquire your books?

CK: Amazon and Barnes & Noble have both the print and ebooks available of Conquering Venus. My poetry collections Better To Travel and After the Poison are at Amazon. The Slow To Burn reissue will be available from Seven Kitchens Press website. Ebook fans can also find Conquering Venus at places like Smashwords and OmniLit.

SP: Was it harder or easier to write the sequel to Conquering Venus?

CK: The challenge with Remain in Light was creating a sequel that continues the story from Conquering Venus, but also stands alone as its own story. My goal is to have each of the novels in the trilogy stand on their own so they can be read in any order. While Conquering Venus is literary fiction with a little magical realism thrown in, Remain in Light shifts in tone and has a more urgent, suspenseful storyline. I think anyone who likes a good mystery and detective story will love Remain in Light.

SP: When will Remain in Light be available?

CK: Since the ebook version of Conquering Venus far outsold the print edition, we’re staggering the release of Remain in Light. The ebook will be out in late October just in time for the holidays and the print will appear in January 2012.

SP: Interesting. I have the print edition of Conquering Venus. Are the ebooks specifically for one kind of e-reader or suitable for all?

CK: It depends on where you buy the ebook. Those bought on Amazon can only be read on a Kindle and those bought at Barnes & Noble can only be read on the Nook. But there are great sites like Smashwords where you can download books in various ebook formats and read them on any device. Conquering Venus is on Smashwords and Remain in Light will be, too.

SP: Do you have a favourite amongst your own poetry books?

CK: I really do love Slow To Burn. I think some of my best work is in there, so I’m thrilled Seven Kitchens Press is bringing it back into print for new readers to discover. The new collection I’m working on now is shaping up to be pretty good, too. I’ll be sending it out to publishers soon.

SP: I love that book too, but I’m also very keen on the others. Good luck with all your new endeavours!

Emptying the Bucket

2011-06-29T12:50:00.019+10:00

The Bucket List was an entertaining, feel-good movie with excellent actors. The message was one of hope and positivity. No wonder so many people embraced the concept of fulfilling all one’s dreams before one dies. Helps to have enough money to be able to fly all over the world at a moment’s notice, of course, if your dreams involve things that can only happen in other countries. And if you’re terminally ill, you might need at least one friend to help you handle the logistical stuff. But let’s not quibble. It was inspiring and a lot of people were duly inspired. I have friends who have done daring things and had exciting adventures after making their bucket lists. They feel altered, their lives enriched.

Me, though, I have a somewhat different idea. Having reached the grand age of 71 and not feeling particularly old (indeed, an internet health quiz assures me my virtual age is 56.2) but still aware that my time is finite, I have come to the delightful conclusion that there are things I never have to do — or, in some cases, never have to do again. I have a very good excuse now to let go of anything I don’t fancy. There are no obligations any more, whether imposed by myself or others. I can just tip them out of my bucket.

Here’s my empty-the-bucket list:

1. I never have to get over my water phobia.

I love swimming, though I’m not particularly good at it, and don’t do laps or anything. I like to float and frolic about and enjoy the water. But I don’t enjoy getting it in my face. For most of my life the merest splash has sent me into screaming terror. It's not that it's unconquerable. In the past I have done things like jumping and even diving into pools, but it never became any easier; I was an emotional wreck after each time I dared. When I took my toddlers to swimming classes I managed to conceal my fear and duck my head in the water and come up smiling at them, because of what was at stake. My Mum was phobic, including this phobia. I didn’t want to pass it on to my kids, and I am glad to say I didn’t.

I have actually done a lot of work on clearing this phobia, and have pretty much overcome it by now. I can stand in the shower and let the water run over my face, without a twitch. If I get splashed when I’m in swimming, I no longer experience panic. In a way, what I have now is the habit of the fear. So what’s the problem? Well, I’ve grown comfortable with not leaping into pools either head or feet first. I’m used to swimming from the neck down while my head stays out of the water, and I have no ambition to learn the Australian crawl even if I am an Aussie. So I am happily relinquishing any further work on my phobia. We get on together just fine, my phobia and me. Having lasted for 71 years, we can continue until the end.

2. Same goes for my height phobia.

I have conquered it at times, with varying degrees of attendant discomfort, in order to climb Ayers Rock (now more properly known as Uluru), see the view from St Pauls’ Cathedral, London, and explore Macchu Pichu. But you won’t catch me bungee jumping or parachuting out of aeroplanes. Do you think I’m crazy?

3. I don’t have to read all the books I ought to.

I’m sorry, but Christina Stead and Henry Handel Richardson bore me. Also I’m not going to keep up with all the terrific new literary novels. I’ll read anything by Tim Winton, David Malouf and Richard Flanagan, but apart from that, I’ll focus on poetry and fantasy, and the great pleasure of re-reading my old favourites. And, for the fantasy, I’m likely to prefer Young Adult novels (Australians Isobelle Carmody and Alison Croggon are among the authors I like best).

4. I don’t have to behave properly.

I can be silly if I want to. I can clown around, I can be an exhibitionist, I can look like a complete idiot. So what? I’m an old lady; not only is less expected of me, but I care a great deal less what people may think of me.
If I want to take off my shoes and dance in the shallows, I will. If I want to to yell out in the street so as to locate my husband, why not? If I’m going to look stupid or ignorant by asking a particular question, who cares? I’ll ask it anyway.

5. I never have to understand the financial news.

The bit they show on telly is comprehensible, just. The in-depth stuff in the more serious newspapers has always been beyond me. I don’t need to understand national or international economics to balance my personal budget. Seems to me that economics is highly theoretical anyway, economists disagree among themselves, and national leaders don’t always make the best decisions. Once upon a time, I thought it was incumbent on good citizens to strive to master that theory; as I haven’t done it yet, I’m not going to bother.

6. I don’t have to prove I’m smart.

I am, and I know that; it doesn’t matter if other people don’t know it. I’m not trying to build a high-flying career, or compete for a top salary.

7. I don’t have to be famous.

Which is just as well, because it doesn’t seem likely. When I was much younger I wanted to be a famous poet. As I got older I observed that (a) even the most famous living poets aren’t really famous, comparatively speaking: very few people know their names compared with those of movie stars, pop singers and sporting heroes (b) being a famous anything robs one of privacy and a large degree of freedom. Anonymity is very nice! I‘d love to be a great poet, though it’s clear to me I’m not. I’ll continue striving to be the best poet I can be, because that’s the way I enjoy myself. If I touch some hearts in the process, that's wonderful — and it's enough.

8. I don’t have to put up with people I can’t stand.

Life’s too short. I can do the equivalent of blocking them on facebook (which may be included) and cut them out of my life so that, as far as possible, I need never have anything to do with them again. So what if I appear rude? I’m not nasty or abusive, just unresponsive and unavailable. Life is much pleasanter and more peaceful this way.

And in the bucket?

Yes, there are a few things I want to do before I go, but they might seem tame to most people.

True, it would be nice to see Paris, Spain, Hawaii … but it’s not a passion, not a must. I’ve seen a lot and done a lot, and I have lived in the 20th and 21st centuries when it is possible to enjoy great concerts, theatre and art exhibitions in the comfort of one’s own home. Believe me, I haven’t missed out on much.

The things for which I have a serious longing are quiet, interior sorts of things. No matter how outgoing I’ve learned to be, I’m still the introvert at heart. (I wonder if all writers are.) So I want to read or re-read certain books — Georgia O’Keeffe, for instance, discussing her artistic process in a big book entitled only with her name, which also includes quality reproductions of some of her work. And I want to see, or see again, certain shows. At present I’m working my way through all of Buffy and Angel, which I did see on TV when they first appeared, and which I eventually bought. Right now I’m frustrated as hell because I have just discovered that the whole of my Angel, Season 4 is damaged and I can’t view the discs. I didn’t keep the receipt. In any case, when I phoned the shop to see if they had more in stock, they said no and they were unlikely to get it again. There will be desperate searching online, I can tell you! Yes it does mean more to me than confronting my fears or travelling to new locations.

For the rest, I like my life the way it is and hope I am long spared to enjoy my friends, my home, and the natural beauty that surrounds me in the Mt Warning Caldera.

Gil Scott-Heron, Voice of Black Culture, Dies at 62

2011-06-01T10:45:00.003+10:00

I didn't know this poet or his work, but I like what my friend Thom Woodruff (aka Thom the World Poet and various other pen-names) writes, for this occasion but more widely applicable:

WHEN A POET DIES
for a short time,every one remembers his/her lines
They get quoted in bylines(never the full poem)
A picture flashes of them (usually @the height of their fame
Never a picture of them as they lay dying
Never in their last Fat Elvis days
A byline may allude to drugs and sex and children
but it is the poem that will live on-
thin and ruthless,true as spear and fire
If the line is taut and stripped and bare
Naked as newborn and barking @the moon
If each word fits like the coat of your skin
You will wear this poem.You will remember her/him
That is where the point resides-deep inside the flesh of mind
like St Sebastians arrows making martydom
The arrow of truth -a burning poem.

Global Art Competition

2011-05-19T07:24:00.003+10:00

I received this polite request which may, as the writer says, be of interest to some of my readers:

Hi Rosemary

Flink12, a new social networking site, has just launched its Global Icon Art Competition. I thought that you and the readers of Snaky Poet would be interested in this unique opportunity. We're offering $3,000 commissions to create icons for the site. This is a great opportunity for artists and graphic designers to promote their work globally and possibly win a longer-term contract with us.

We're looking for original, fun and expressive graphic icons to be used as status updates for the network. These icons will be used daily by Flinkers on their web browsers and mobile devices. I've put together a microsite with all of the info on the competition along with images, videos, banners and more. Please feel free to share any or all of it:

http://flink12news.com

If you are able to post or tweet about Flink12 and the Global Icon Art Competition please let me know. I’d be happy to answer any questions personally as well.

Thank you so much,

Brenda McEwan

facebook.com/Flink12
twitter.com/Flink12

Stylish Blogger Award

2011-04-22T17:43:00.018+10:00

I just received one! It was awarded by bttrflyscar and the details are here. It was not for this blog but for my poetry blog, The Passionate Crone. I am now asked to award ten other bloggers similarly, and disclose seven things about myself. This makes for a long post, so I'm doing it here in order to leave The Passionate Crone for poems.

10 blogs

What makes a blog stylish, in my book? Primarily, the words have to be good. Most of these are poetry blogs, and all are created by poets — wonderful poets — so the words are excellent. Secondly it must look good. These ten include the minimalist, the decorative, the dynamic; all are created with an eye to their appearance, and are user-friendly too.

1. Collin Kelley’s Modern Confessional

I met Collin at the Austin International Poetry Festival in 2006, but we didn’t really get to know each other until afterwards, staying connected online. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, from where he works as an editor, promotes and encourages fellow poets, and takes a lively interest in all things cultural including pop culture and an eclectic range of music — all of which he blogs about forthrightly and entertainingly. Everything Collin does is stylish. Just click on the Books link at the top of his blog and look at those gorgeous covers! (The contents are yummy too.)

2. Jennie Fraine’s Jaywig’s Jotter

Jennie’s an extraordinary poet whose work is too little known, even though she tends to win awards on the rare occasions she competes for them. She’s an old friend of mine and I take at least part of the credit for her recent foray into blogging. She doesn’t network a lot online, being too busy supporting people in real life, working for Landmark Education. Also an artist, she has a natural elegance which her blog reflects. She has always been an excellent source of advice on my own poetry, when asked.

3. Odilia Galvan Rodriguez’s ~feathers from the muse’s wings~

Odilia used to have the most exotically beautiful blog on MySpace; it was like entering a rich other world. Now MySpace is much changed and neither she nor I frequent it any more, but fortunately she has this other blog, which — although the décor is quite different — also invites one in, as into a sanctuary. She does wonderful things with poetry, from haiku to pantoums, and including free verse. I also love that she is a passionate activist and writes often about those topics too.

4. Shanna Baldwin-Moore’s Poettree

Shanna lives in Hawaii, and enjoys living close to nature. Like some others in my list, she is artist as well as poet. She loves haiku and often turns them into haiga by marrying them with wonderful photos, drawings and computer graphics. On her blog, these are interspersed with the longer poems she also writes.

5. Rachel Phillips’s Outlasting Moths

Rachel used to have a very minimalist blog with almost no personal information. I imagined her as an elderly lady like myself, reflecting on her experiences. (I’ve never told her that.) When she revamped the blog and included personal information, I discovered she is young and outdoorsy! Her poems seem to me to have a mature sensibility, and to be beautifully crafted. They remind me a bit of Leonard Cohen – not that they could be mistaken for a Cohen song or vice versa, as both have unique voices, but her poems have a similar evocativeness, leading the reader to associations beyond the text and seemingly creating new archetypes.

6. Amanda Joy’s Little Glass Pen

Amanda Joy is an Australian poet like me, but we’ve never met as she lives on the other side of the country. She is another I first encountered on MySpace where she had a huge following; then I found out she also has this blog and many followers here too. Her work is powerful and beautiful, and often experimental. It always makes you think.

7. Samuel Paralta’s Semaphore

I only know this poet online, where I think I first encountered him on twitter. He’s a most beautiful lyric poet; I’m always in awe of what he does with words. If I could steal the gifts of just one poet in this list, I might well choose his.

8. Rob Schackne’s The Tao That Can Be Named

Rob’s an old friend I lost touch with many years ago. Recently he found me on facebook. I see from his stunning blog that his poetry has matured into accomplished work which invites as much thought as feeling. He also posts on his blog work he likes by other poets, from the famous to the relatively unknown. Like Jennie, he is one of the few I turn to for opinions on my own work, and has given me valuable commentary.

9. Pearl Pirie’s 40-Word Years

Pearl and I encountered each other when we participated in the first September poetry month at Poewar: Writers’ Resource Center in 2007, and we became interested enough in each other’s work to connect to each other’s blogs. 40-Word Years is her version of a game we both enrolled in, started by another blogger in 2008, to write every day about someone who has made an impact on you, in the same number of words as your age. We have both chosen to continue long past that first year. Hers are closer to daily than mine ended up being (I haven’t even made 365 yet); she has stuck to 40 words whereas mine have increased with each birthday; and she now includes anecdotes and tributes. She’s quirky, humorous, compassionate, clear-seeing, and she always finds the most interesting conjunctions of words to convey an essence.

10. Bette Norcross Wappner’s Surimono Garden

Bette’s another friend discovered online. She creates exquisite haiku and equally exquisite woodblock prints, combining them as haiga. I do experience her blog as like being in a peaceful, restorative garden.

7 things about me

1. When I was a little girl, I decided that there could be no better thing to do with my life than make poems. I still think so, even though I haven’t reached such heights of life-affirming beauty as I imagined then.

2. I’m not a fiction writer. I have managed some quite creditable short stories — both of them published — but nothing earth-shattering, and my few attempts at novels have been pretty bad. Luckily I have no particular desire to create fiction (except in verse). I do like writing articles and essays, so I enjoy blogging.

3. I used to read heaps of fiction; in the last 20 years or so I rather lost my taste for it and haven’t read much — except for good fantasy, which I devour. (And except for old favourites, which I like re-reading).

4. I think the greatest English-language poets have been Shakespeare, Chaucer and Yeats.

5. My favourite contemporary poets are Mary Oliver, Jared Carter and Marge Piercy. And there are lots of others I love too.

6. My secret alter ego (no longer secret!) is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I always wanted to save the world — a lot.

7. I’m quite shy but I hide it well.

Hugs and Kisses

2011-03-21T16:19:00.011+11:00

Last Wednesday we had an errand in the coastal village where we lived until just over a year ago. We were there six years, loved it, but always wished it were a little closer to the town ringed by mountains which we came to in 1994 and have returned to now. We still wish the two were a fraction closer! We get back to the coast every Friday, to the writers’ group, but that doesn’t leave a lot of time over.

So on Wednesday, after completing our errand, we had coffee and cake in the newly re-opened Courtyard Café. It closed down when the old general store in its historic building succumbed to competition from a supermarket chain. But it’s all turned out well. Half the old building became the new home for the organic greengrocer. Now, months later, the other half has become the kitchen and shop counter for the café, under new management. I don’t know what they’ve done exactly, but the café itself looks revivified, though it still has the same tables and chairs with the same trees around them.

The sun was shining. We had no need to hurry. The coffee was good and the cake delicious. The waitress/manager was helpful and happy. My Beloved relaxed with the daily paper, left out for customers. I wrote a small poem:

Coffee in the courtyard.
The low buildings,
the palms and frangipani,
the warm autumn sun
make me feel I’m in Darwin
or Bali, or Nepal.
‘It would be nice to be there,’
my companion says. Yes,
and it’s nice to be here.

I have spent time in all those places, and sometimes hunger for them, but on that day in those surroundings … well, the poem says it.

After that we had a look in the Opp Shop. Himself found a nice shirt good as new. I found two more clowns for my small collection. Normally I get a Pierrot and Columbine pair — not necessarily created as a pair, but I can match them up that way. This time I found something different: two boys in tartan trousers and tam-o-shanters, smiling twins. They were undoubtedly created at the same time, to be together!

Then we started for home, a half hour’s drive. I decided to take the coast road — almost as quick, and much prettier. I realised we would pass the house of the Lady Who Lives with Fairies, and had an impulse to visit.

‘You stay in the car,’ I said, ‘While I see if she’s home.’ At first I thought she wasn’t, but then she opened her door. Her greeting was less exuberant than usual. ‘We were passing,’ I said. ‘And I had an urge to drop in. Is it convenient?’ She hesitated, then said that it wasn’t really: she’d only just got home after taking her son to the airport. I waved my Spouse back into the car.

The Lady Who Lives with Fairies apologised as she hugged me. ‘That’s all right,’ I said with a smile, kissing her cheek, ‘Obviously I came to give you a kiss.’ We drove home happily through tall trees.

Later that day I made a quick dash into our little town to get a few things from the shops. I was walking up the ramp in the shopping centre as the Pink-Haired Musician was coming down. Seeing me, she threw her arms open wide, so I walked right into them and we had a big hug.

‘I needed that!’ she said, and told me she was on her way to Court, where she was acting as an advocate for her son who is mentally ill. It’s a complex situation that’s been going on a long time. She said, almost matter-of-factly, that each time it tears her heart out. We had another hug.

‘It’s my day for hugging people!’ I told her. ‘That’s my job today.’ I was filled with delight. What better job could there be?

Next day I had an email from the Lady Who Lives with Fairies, saying, ‘I was so low today I couldn't invite you in as I really can't talk about the pain I am feeling...but it gladdened my heart to know you had been prompted to come for a visit.’ (She hurts for her son, who has many troubles.) So I knew I was right — I did go there especially to give her a kiss. I’m sure I was indeed prompted.

Decade by Decade

2011-03-15T23:48:00.000+11:00

I found this meme on a social networking site.

Interesting exercise. It does leave out whole chunks of life, and important events that didn't happen in the years selected — but so be it. It's like a series of keyhole glimpses.

2011    Living in Northern Rivers region of NSW, still with third husband. Facilitator of weekly writers’ workshop of four years' standing. Secretary, Management Committee, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre. Semi-retired psychic medium, Reiki Master and copy editor/proofreader. Third book of poetry published (2005). Writing poetry online.

2001    Living in the Northern Rivers region, NSW. Eight years married to third husband. Working as psychic medium and Reiki Master, sometimes as teacher of writing. Writing poetry.

1991    Living at Three Bridges (rural area in the hills east of Melbourne). Kids grown and independent. Author of two books of poetry (1985, 1991). Teaching Poetry Writing at TAFE. Part time freelance journalist. Established Tarot reader, meditation teacher and Reiki practitioner. Began Reiki Master training. Celebrated 25th wedding anniversary with second husband. Wound up Abalone Press. Writing and performing poetry.

1981    Living in Melbourne. Part-time librarian. Sometime artists’ model. Sometime crochet teacher. Published poet. High profile performance poet. Committee member Poets Union of Australia, Melbourne Branch. Poetry workshop presenter, Pentridge Prison. Began Abalone Press (publishing Australian poets).

1971    Living in Melbourne. Married to second husband (abalone diver). Mother of two very young sons. Foster-mother to teenager. Temporarily retired from library career. Writing poetry privately.

1961    Living in Melbourne. Finishing University degree. Also attending Library School. Recovering from first love and broken heart. Meeting the man who would become my first husband. Writing poetry very privately.

1951    Living in Launceston, Tasmania. Final year of primary school. Writing and performing poetry (since age seven).

1941    Living in Launceston, Tasmania. Turned two in November.

My Poems Set to Music

2011-03-05T13:43:00.002+11:00

When I was in Austin, Texas in 2006 as a Visiting Poet, I met a Visiting Muso (from the UK) called Clive Price. We were often on the same bill, and loved hearing each other's work. Later he set one of my poems, Traveller, to music. You can hear it, and a couple of his other songs, here and you can read the words here.

I'm thrilled that he's just now given another of my poems beautiful music. You can listen to it on Youtube here and you can read the words here.

Positive Thinking Be Damned

2011-02-05T02:11:00.006+11:00

I spit me of positive thinking!

Yes there may have been something in it the way Norman Vincent Peale first wrote about it, but these days it is too often interpreted in the shallowest terms. It has become just another New Age wank. I am so sick of people who think everything can be solved by being all sweetness and light, in the face of absolutely any trial or trauma that may come along. It’s not always intelligent or appropriate.

I’m sure that a habitually cheery nature probably has a good effect on one’s health and wellbeing and eases one’s social relationships — or at the very least must make it easier to bear the vicissitudes of fortune. I do believe that gratitude is a powerful force that attracts more good stuff to you. But here’s the rub — you have to mean it, it must be genuine. It doesn’t work when it’s a form of denial.

As I am always telling my clients and students, it’s no good stuffing a positive affirmation on top of a negative. The subconscious isn’t fooled for a moment. The example I use is: you say, ‘Oh I am so abundant!’ and your subconscious goes, ‘So how come you can’t afford those new tyres you need?’

You need to drag the negative thoughts out into the light of day first and have a look at them. Some are just things that float through the collective mind of the culture you live in. “All men are bastards’, ‘All politicians are crooks’, and so on. Them you can afford to dismiss. Say to those thoughts, ‘Thank you for sharing, you can go now.’ Others may be justified. If you really can’t afford new tyres that you need, better plan a way to have it happen rather than keep stewing in useless worry. And if it’s something that seems too big for you to deal with, you need to hand it over to a higher power. ‘OK mate, you fix this one; too big for me!’

I also believe in the old adage, ‘Trust in God and keep your powder dry / tether your horse’ — whichever version you were told. Or let’s put it this way: ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ We do have to do our bit. If a cyclone or a flood is coming, for instance, by all means hand it over to God; also you may well need to evacuate. (We have experienced both these events in Australia recently, so those examples spring to mind.) And if your commonsense or your intuition is giving you a warning, it might be more useful to take note than to ignore it in favour of thinking positive.

‘Don’t be so negative! We’ll find the money,’ says my beloved when he wants something we can’t afford. Yes, we very well might — but only if we budget for it. Spending beyond our income is not a good solution. Running short of money is not a time to think positive, I reckon, so much as a time to pray. (And having prayed, then you can be positive enough to trust that your prayers will be answered, as indeed they always are.)

I’m particularly annoyed about this whole issue just now because a friend has cancer. It’s the second time she’s had it. I learned today that for some time she had been waking up in the night thinking that there was cancer back in her body, and everyone kept telling her, ‘No, it’s cured. Think positive’. So she put off going to the doctor. She is having treatment now, but would of course have preferred to catch it earlier. As she said today, her body was trying to give her a message, and she was persuaded to ignore it.

‘Who told you that you were cured"?’ I asked, wondering if it was her doctors. She just repeated, ‘Everyone!’ So I am thinking she has a fair few New Age wankers around her. I mean, if someone told me they had such a worry, the first thing I’d say to them would be, ‘Well, get it checked out, if only to put your mind at rest.’

The next thing I’d say would be, ‘May I do some absent Reiki on you and ask your Higher Self what’s going on?’ I’m not allowed, by law, to diagnose, but I might find reason to say, ‘Yes, there does seem to be something the matter. It might not be what you think, but do get your doctor to have a look.’ I’m also likely to get a few clues about mental/emotional factors contributing to the problem, and could give the person something to work on at that level. Can’t hurt, could help. I would also, of course, continue with the Reiki to try and help heal the condition.

And if I didn't pick up anything? Then all I could say would be, 'Well, I didn't find anything alarming, but I'm not infallible. I think you should double-check with your doctor just in case.'

But really, what sort of friends would tell someone who had that kind of concern, someone who had previously had cancer, to just ignore it and think positive instead of getting medical advice? I don’t at all understand that attitude.

Sorry or Not

2011-02-01T00:34:00.001+11:00

Am I the only person in the world who thinks saying ‘sorry’ is over-rated? Don’t get me wrong — if indigenous communities want and need an apology for the vile things done to them by colonial governments, they are entitled to it and should have it. Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Australians was one of the most moving and powerful things I’ve ever witnessed! And it was absolutely necessary, because the people had been asking for it for decades, and because it was a public acknowledgment of the terrible wrong done to them. That I can understand. Further, his speech was comprehensive and detailed. He made it clear exactly what white Australia was apologising for, and why.

In my personal life, though, I notice that there are people who say ‘sorry’ without really meaning it. It’s almost like giving themselves a licence to do whatever-it-was again. A quick, slick ‘sorry’ means they never have to think about what they did. It is an acknowledgment that I have been offended, but not of why. I sometimes get the idea that they actually don’t understand why — or simply don’t care.

I myself don’t actually care if they feel sorry or not. Other people’s feelings are their own concern. I don’t want to guilt-trip anyone. If they’ve upset me, I would quite like them to understand why I am upset, and not to belittle or trivialise that — but even this is a secondary consideration.

What I want is the assurance that they won’t do whatever-it-was again.

Bloody Telstra! (And the same goes for our Federal Opposition.)

2011-01-17T16:06:00.000+11:00

Our wireless modem connection suddenly and without warning cuts out late on 4th January. I phone Technical Support. The technician can’t solve it and says he will alert the senior technicians and it will take ‘two days maximum’ to fix the problem. A senior technician phones me next day and says they are still investigating and please keep the phone lines open so they can let me know the outcome. On the 8th (three days later) I have still heard nothing, so I phone to see what’s happening. I’m told it is still under investigation and they have to send technicians to the region; five days maximum and please keep the lines open. I phone back on the 14th, i.e. six days later. Then I am told that the problem was resolved on the 8th; they found that it was not a fault in the network so I must have a faulty modem. Nice of them to let me know! The guy I’m talking to does some checks and finds that my modem is indeed faulty. They will replace it within three business days, i.e. by the 19th. Had we been informed on the 8th, we could have had the new modem by now.

I’m annoyed that, in a time of disastrous flooding nearby, when family and friends interstate and overseas wanted reassurance of our safety, we were left off the internet longer than necessary and asked to keep phone lines clear (so when people did phone, we were short with them).

Furthermore, this is the second faulty modem we’ve had within 12 months. What sort of crap are they supplying?

Unfortunately we are locked into a contract for another 12 months and it would cost too much to get out of it now. I was under the impression we had a very limited choice of servers here as we can’t get ADSL and must opt for wireless/ Telstra offered the best deal of those I investigated. This best is not very good in practice — the signal strength is so weak that our connection is sometimes as slow as dial-up. I have since learnt the choice is not so limited as I’d thought, but I won’t be able to take advantage of that for some time yet.

Of course, I wouldn’t have been in this pickle if we had cable. Will the Opposition PLEASE get out of the way and stop obstructing the roll-out of the National Broadband Network to rural areas?!

So That Was 2010

2010-12-24T08:08:00.008+11:00

(Our personal 2010, I mean. You all know already what happened in the wider world.)

It was a mixed bag.

Wonderful to get our Housing Dept home after the 13-year wait, back in a town we’ve always loved, just as we needed to be closer to shops and services. It's also closer to many old friends, and we have been making new ones too since our return a year ago. We continue to love our peaceful street, with nice neighbours and mountain views.

The Beloved Spouse’s first wife died in February after an illness. This was of course an emotional time for him and his children. He couldn't attend the funeral (in Melbourne) but contributed his reminiscences to the eulogy.

Good news is that Spouse’s heart specialist told him at his annual check-up in Feb. that his heart is in excellent shape.

The old car became scary to drive with the automatic transmission slipping, but we were lucky to find an affordable replacement.

I retired from the Sunday markets soon after moving. Adored the work and the atmosphere for many years, but realised I didn't want to keep getting up so early and lugging the stall around. Occasionally people track me down and come to the house for Reiki treatments or psychic readings.

We both developed eye problems. Spouse needed expensive laser work. Thanks to his youngest, my Second Stepson, for a generous and well-timed gift which made that possible! (Yes, there are Medicare refunds but you still have to pay upfront.) As for me, I have a film over my left retina, a thing which apparently can happen with age. They monitor it frequently and I do a little eye test every day. If the film stays tightly attached, no problem; if it gets loose and wrinkly, I'll need surgery. This is unpredictable, but so far so good.

June - July were our worst months. My favourite Aunty over in Perth, my 'second Mum', died. Sad, but not unexpected. Then Spouse got an infected toe and went to hospital, we thought for a day or two. He deteriorated rapidly, was transferred from the local hospital to a bigger one forty-five minutes away, and all in all was in for three weeks. It wasn't the toe, which cleared up. Apparently he got a strain of flu they couldn't identify. He nearly died, and it was all very scary for both of us. He finally turned the corner when I called in all the Reiki help I could get, but remained frail some time after coming home.

I bought him a wheely walker, which he still needs from time to time due to arthritis. In fact we now have one for the house and one for the car to save me lugging it up and down steps. I'm not supposed to do heavy lifting because of my own arthritis, and have also stopped my Tai Chi classes because I can no longer stand on my right leg. But we are taking supplements and have found our way back to our good chiropractor in the coastal village where we used to live, who is helping. You walk out of his clinic with your body feeling noticeably different!

I still travel to said village often as facilitator of the WordsFlow writers' group (which has been going four years now) and as Secretary of the Management Committee for the Neighbourhood Centre. They won't let me go! Which is fine, as I enjoy both roles and it's only a half hour drive through pretty country. If I still lived in Melbourne, a half hour drive would seem like nothing.

During an exciting visit in May from Thom the World Poet (based in Austin, Texas) and his mate Bob Mud, muso/poet./artist from Brisbane, with a workshop for WordsFlow and a performance in the Castle on the Hill at nearby Uki, Spouse became so enthused that he joined WordsFlow and has been getting stuck into his autobiography and his children's stories.

We had a visit from Spouse's eldest, my First Stepson and the three little grand-daughters, soon after moving here. They filled the house with laughter and colour, and it suddenly seemed very quiet and spacious after they left.

Later in the year the beautiful Stepdaughter had a quick trip to the Gold Coast with her boyfriend, and drove down here to take us to lunch and see the new home.

(Her son, 18 now, is shaping up as a talented writer, which is exciting for his grandparents here!) And Second Stepson is arriving tomorrow for a week's visit over xmas.

My Firstborn injured an Achilles tendon some months ago, and is still recovering after surgery and having to wear a special boot for a while. No more swing dancing for him just yet, which was one of his greatest pleasures — but he has taken up DJ-ing and is enjoying it.

There have been some deaths of old friends, not all of them elderly.

I am still estranged from my Youngest, by my own choice.

I have acquired several new Reiki students who want to go as far as I can take them with their training, and who are already potential Masters, exciting to teach. One of them has created a herb garden for us in our little courtyard out the back.

We have a wonderful handyman who is an old Reiki student of mine. Housing Dept maintenance is quick to fix the essential and/or emergency stuff; he does the rest very well at a most reasonable rate. The guy who used to mow our lawns for free became a family man and isn't so available any more — but with our Housing Dept rent we have a little more money to spare, and our neighbour's friend, who does her lawn for $20 a fortnight, asked if we'd like him to do ours too. Yes! And I finally succumbed and got household help from Home Care for a very low fee. They don't do everything, but they do the stuff I can't manage, and are nice women to boot. (Stop it with those mental images! That’s not what I meant.)

Spouse had another trip to hospital in September, following a fall. He complained of headache and blacked out a minute, which was enough for me to call the ambulance. However he was fine and they allowed him home in a few days. Whew!

We are adjusting to being older and less mobile, e.g.for the most part seeing movies on DVD rather than climb stairs at the cinema. (With our wide-screen digital telly which we were able to get at sale price just after moving here, that's no hardship!) I'm enjoying doing more of the driving now and feeling more confident/competent as a result. Life goes on merrily enough. Writing is our major focus, as indeed it always has been.

As for my great weight loss program, it got thoroughly abandoned. This was not planned, but a lapse that lasted and lasted. Too much going on, higher priorities.... Now I am a large lady again — damn! Never mind, after Christmas I’ll start over and stick to it. This is not a New Year resolution (made to be broken) but an intention for taking good care of myself. Others who did stick to it are looking wonderful now!

And so, dear people Bright Blessings to you all!

Haiku and Other Short Forms — the cheat sheet

2010-12-21T16:10:00.007+11:00

Someone asked me for guidance. This may not be the most elegant or scholarly dissertation, but I think it works as a quick reference.

Haiku: three short lines, traditionally 5/7/5 syllables. About nature, including a word that indicates the season (e.g. cherry blossom for spring) and containing a turn of thought or juxtaposition of objects/ideas. They are not supposed to use any poetic devices such as metaphor. Ideally they should create in the reader an ‘aha! moment’.

Senryu: same form, but about people and can include humour and urban settings.

Modern haiku and senryu in English often ignore the syllable count in favour of short/long/short, as Japanese syllables tend to be briefer than English ones (I’m told). In this case they aim for shorter lines than 5/7/5. Some people even go in for one-line haiku! They often omit punctuation, too.

In our Haiku on Friday page on facebook, the lines between haiku and senryu are sometimes pretty blurred!

Renga: a chain, in which someone adds two 7-syllable (or just longer) lines to the original haiku. The next person will then write another three, and so on, until everyone gets sick of keeping it going.

Tanka: a 5-line form of 5/7/5/7/7 syllables or short/long/short/long/long. Not so strictly about nature, though they can be. Often have a romantic theme. There should be the ‘turn of thought’ and aha! moment in tanka too.

Lune: a 3-line form devised as a Western haiku, based on syllable count without all the other rules. Called lune because of crescent shape (resulting from line lengths). Two kinds:
Kelly lune invented by Robert Kelly; syllables 5/3/5. Collum lune by Jack Collum, who misremembered and taught it as 3/5/3 WORDS (rather than syllables).

Gogyohka: new Japanese form freer than tanka. 5 lines, each as long as one breath (if speaking them aloud). No other rules.

Initial Capitals in Poetry

2010-12-19T08:50:00.003+11:00

I asked a friend to do me the favour of casting a critical eye over my latest manuscript before I submit it. One thing she queried was my practice of not capitalising the initial letter of every line of my poems. Evidently she is more comfortable with the convention of initial capitals.

For the sake of others who may be interested in this question, here is my reply to her:

Many poets still use the convention of capitalising the first letter of every line. At least as many, if not more, no longer do that. There's an interesting discussion of the matter here, amongst poets.

The practice of initial capitalising in English poetry began in the 16th Century. This changed with the advent of free verse in the 20th Century, as initial capitals would have been intrusive to the flow and to the various ways that poetry can now be arranged on the page. It is very common now for formal poets, too, to dispense with initial capitals, though some retain them. On the other hand, some practitioners of free verse, when using a fairly conventional arrangement of lines on the page, like to adopt initial capitals — but have to abandon them when they venture into things like shape poetry or prose poetry.

I write mosty free verse, but like to play with form sometimes. I don't want to be inconsistent within my own work so I adopt prose rules for capitalisation, whatever kind of verse I'm writing.

When all's said and done, these days it depends on the personal preference of the poet.

A River of Stones

2010-12-15T10:17:00.002+11:00

You've heard of NaMoWriMo. Introducing (drumroll.....) NaSmaStoMo!

For the month of January, Fiona Robyn asks people to join her in writing a short piece of writing each day for the whole month, and blogging it either on their usual blog or a new one (or in a notebook if they're shy).

Find out more at her new blog, A River of Stones, and please help spread the word by tweeting and sharing the link on Facebook and emailing your might-be-up-for-it friends.

Fiona says: Don't worry about whether you're a 'writer' or not - this project will help you to connect with the world, and we could all do with a bit more of that. Start the year as you mean to go on.

So are you in?

I am, and will be posting at my new blog (yet another!): Stones for the River.

Book and Film Reviews

2010-11-16T13:53:00.012+11:00

The Goodreads site is a wonderful idea— share information with friends about the books you're reading, or planning to read, or have read; get their tips in return. And, if you're a writer yourself, you can let people know about your own books too.

The trouble was, it became overwhelming. Like other networking sites, it just got too hard to keep up with. I have 26 books on my bedside table already, waiting to be read, and two more by my desk. At present I'm actually reading two of the ones by the bed (Shantaram by Gregory Roberts and Brisingr, third in the Inheritance series which begins with Eragon — massive tomes, both) and I'm dipping into the poetry books amongst the rest. Getting frequent emails with lists of books recommended by friends on Goodreads — well, that was overkill. And I seldom found a minute to list titles myself, let alone write actual reviews. I started feeling guilty.

So I left. And I still feel a little bit guilty about good books I had every intention of recommending. So I'm going to start including book reviews here. Doing it at my own blog, as and when I feel like it, seems a great deal more relaxed.

I'm not sure 'reviews' is quite the right word. I used to be a professional book reviewer once upon a time. What I have in mind here is something much less scholarly or literary, much more a frankly subjective expression of personal opinion. And it seems unlikely that I'll write about books I can't stand. I might, if something really gets my dander up — but as no-one is paying me to read anything these days, why would I bother with stuff I don't like? I'm liable to ditch it early in the piece.

But there — I really believe all lit crit is subjective anyway, even if some of it is well-informed. The word 'reviews' will do.

While I'm at it, I'll let you know how I feel about movies I see, as well.

Post Script, a month later
Nah, 'reviews' is too formal a word for what I have in mind. I want the freedom to be very opinionated! The tags will be just 'books' and 'films'.
As to when it will start happening — oh, let me get all the usual frantic end-of-year stuff over with first.

Lucky Me

2010-10-04T20:08:00.003+11:00

He came into the bathroom, looking for something. I was having a shower. (We don't bother with a shower curtain.) He looked me up and down with a warm smile, his eyes alight, and said, 'You are a beautiful woman.'

This is a very nice thing for any woman to hear from her beloved, in any circumstances. When she is 70 years old, overweight, and stark naked under a bright light, that makes it very special indeed!

Footy Fever

2010-09-26T00:48:00.010+10:00

Despite being born and bred in the home of Aussie Rules — Melbourne — my husband has never followed footy in his life. This takes some doing, in a city where football is not only the major religion but practically compulsory! ('Football' meaning Aussie Rules, of course. They do have Rugby and Soccer; those are called Rugby and Soccer.)

I grew up in Tasmania, which, back in those days, was its second home, but I managed to escape the general fanaticism too. Then I went to Melbourne.

‘Who do you barrack for?” asked every new acquaintance. When I told them I didn’t barrack for anyone, they said, ‘Oh, you have to barrack for someone. You’ve gotta have a team.’

I was studying at the University of Melbourne, in the suburb of Carlton, and eventually lived in Carlton too. So I decided to barrack for the Carlton footy team. I learned how to say things like, ‘Carn the mighty Blues!’ with every appearance of enthusiasm, but it’s just pretend. I never went to a Carlton game and only know the name of one player, the great Alex Jesaulenko of decades past. (Everyone knew that name, even if they didn’t barrack for Carlton; just as everybody knew the names of other greats such as Ron Barrassi, Lou Richards and Norm Smith. Living in Melbourne, there were some things you couldn’t escape.) In truth, I never know how ‘my’ team is doing unless they get into a Grand Final, which I find out at the last minute, or even after the event.

For a while I joined the Anti-Football League and wore the badge. Journalist Keith Dunstan started the Anti-Football League so that people who longed for intelligent conversation that was not about football could identify each other at parties. Unfortunately, we all found ourselves talking about football more than ever, as the Aussie Rules fans would bail us up and demand to know why we were against the noble sport.

Anyway, you get the idea — my beloved and I are not keen on football, and manage to live our lives blissfully unaware of it most of the time. Grand Finals come and go and leave us unmoved. Today, however, I had a strong urge to watch the latest Grand Final on TV, and he entered into the spirit of it too. As Carlton wasn’t playing, we decided to barrack for St Kilda. I lived Bayside for most of my time in Melbourne, which made the Saints my local team; also they have the best club song — ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ of course, with only the slightest change of wording.

We settled down in our armchairs and had a thoroughly good time, cheering or groaning in all the right places. We got quite carried away and found ourselves yelling advice to the players. I don’t know what came over us, really. Who knew that watching footy could be such fun?

It was a very exciting game, which ended in a draw. The final point was scored just before the closing siren sounded. I wonder if we can stand to watch the replay next week?

WordsFlowers in The Smoking Poet

2010-09-18T10:15:00.000+10:00

I'm chuffed that two members of my WordsFlow writing group have just been published in the Fall Issue (#16) of the lively online literary mag., The Smoking Poet. See Poverty, by Eddie Blatt and The Desert People, by Bron Trathen.

What is a Healthy Relationship?

2010-09-13T08:06:00.002+10:00

Worth sharing (copied from the blog Fiona's Inspirations):

I found this very concise explanation of a healthy relationship in a booklet produced by the Tweed Shire Women’s Service. After searching the web and not finding anything so clear and succinct, I decided to reproduce it here to share with others.
A healthy relationship is identified through the presence of equality. The elements of a healthy relationship are applicable to all forms of relationships with friends, dating, partners, intimate partners, life partners, of family members.
Trust: Trust lies at the heart of the relationship and is the foundation that love and respect are built on.
Support: Support and encouragement of each other to achieve their goals and dreams, and personal growth.
Respect: Respect other people’s boundaries. Learn other people’s boundaries and do not infringe upon them.
Responsibility: A shared responsibility for maintaining the relationship. Both people in a relationship should be included in making decisions.
Communication: Communicate effectively. Effective communication involves clearly expressing your thoughts and feelings, and listening to those of others.
Boundaries: Maintain healthy boundaries. Create a safe and comfortable space to experience relationships by defining and communicating your boundaries to others.
Honesty: Be open and honest. It is important for both people in a relationship to be honest about their intentions, feelings or desires.
Accountability: Be responsible for your own actions. Talk to others to understand how your actions affect them.
There is no place in a healthy relationship for controlling, abusive and violent behaviour.

Reference: ‘What is a Healthy Relationship?’ A Woman’s Guide to Reclaiming a Healthy Relationship produced by Tweed Shire Women’s Service

A Minor Mystery

2010-09-11T00:19:00.002+10:00

We recently started getting the Sydney Morning Herald delivered each morning. What luxury! When we were a little poorer, we used to get it only on Mondays for the excellent TV guide, and we went to the shop to buy it.

Andrew loves it: best paper he’s ever come across, he says. (I used to feel that way about the Melbourne Age, which is ‘from the same stable’.) I like it too, but most of all for the word puzzles, which I solve (or not) while watching TV in the evenings.

Then, for the last two mornings, it went missing. The first time, I didn‘t get to the newsagent to report it unil late in the afternoon. By then there were none left — not there, not anywhere in town. It was the morning after Australia found out who was going to govern in our hung Parliament; I guess everybody wanted the paper that day. The newsagent gave me a copy of The Australian instead — a paper with a very different political slant from the Herald. ‘Julia Gillard gets nod to govern’ said the SMH headline (I found out online). ‘Gillard gets a second chance,’ said The Australian.

The following day, Andrew saw the paper outside in our yard, but neither of us was dressed at that point. By the time we were, and went to retrieve it, it was gone. I phoned the newsagent, explained, and asked him to keep us another copy. Then I went door-knocking around Tulipwood Court (our little cul-de-sac). My neighbour in the other unit is away. She once told me someone collected her mail for her at such times, so I thought maybe they’d picked up the Herald too on the assumption it was hers. No-one I spoke to knew anything about it.

‘It must have been stolen,’ said one woman. ‘There’s a bit of that goes on around here.’ Another said, ‘I’m up at five every morning. I’ll pick up your paper from now on and put it up on your veranda.’ Sure enough, this morning’s paper was right there outside our front door. Bless her!

The newsagent’s father delivers the papers early. He confirmed he’d thrown it right up into our yard. ‘Could it have been a dog?’ asked the newsagent. ‘One that’s trained to fetch?Dad saw a dog rummaging around in the rubbish bins along the street.’ Hmmm, I’d heard a dog barking up and down the street in the afternoon, which was unusual, and on the way home from the newsagent I saw what looked like a stray in a nearby street to Tulipwood Court. But if so, it must be a very selective dog. Various free newspapers get delivered too, and they have never disappeared. The Tweed Echo was still on our lawn yesterday after the Herald had gone, and the Mail the day before.

I spoke to teenage Nathan from across the road, and his little sister. They were riding their bikes around our end of the street.

‘It could have been Monty,’ they said. ‘He takes shoes sometimes.’

Monty is a big old dog from further down the street, inclined to wander vaguely in front of cars, but we all stop to let him by. Or they thought it might be Baxter. Baxter’s a big boxer who lives near Monty, and is the reason I don’t walk down that end of the street. He appears friendly, but very boisterous; I’ve been scared he’d knock me over in his exuberance.

‘Baxter’s a bad dog!’ said the little girl.

‘There have been some bites,’ said Nathan.

‘And there’s also Coco; she’s a golden labrador who lives down the hill.’

Baxter wasn’t out on the road just then, nor were the other dogs, so I braved the walk to their owners’ houses. Monty had been in his back yard for three months following a complaint to the Council, said the cheery blonde who came to that front door. At Baxter’s place, a teenage boy and girl and their Mum all answered my knock and told me Baxter is now confined by an electric fence and a special collar.

Coco’s house was over the side of the hill, down a dip. There was a little path through bushes, then a big house with a big yard. Coco, lying outside, looked up at me placidly. Not a golden labrador actually, but one of those curly-haired ones that look a bit similar: a golden retriever.

‘Come in,’ called a tall young woman busy peeling vegetables.

She said their SMH wasn’t there this morning either. We had a hunt around the garden but found nothing.

‘If she does pick ours up,’ said Coco’s owner, ‘She usually takes it to where she sits. And she doesn’t bring home other papers.’

She introduced me to gentle Coco, who stood up to greet me and enjoyed having her ears rubbed.

I must be looking my age even though I don’t think so. Coco’s lady took my arm to help me back on to the path up the hillside and asked her teenage daughter to accompany me to the top.

So I don’t know who or what has been making off with our paper, but it won’t happen again thanks to the kind five o’clock riser, and now I’ve met more of our neighbours and found them all very nice.

One door I refrained from knocking on because others said, ‘Stay away from her. She’s ... er ... strange.’ (Strange enough to steal newspapers? Perhaps I’ll never know.)

A Local Character

2010-09-03T22:30:00.001+10:00

Out shopping the other day, I spotted her: one of the strange old ladies who can be seen wandering around Murwillumbah. I’m well acquainted with this particular one and don’t usually see her so externally; but catching sight of her unexpectedly like that, I realised how funny she looked. It wasn’t only the hair dyed an improbable shade, and the plethora of rings and necklaces. She was wearing a long black evening skirt topped by a casual, striped windcheater starting to fray a little at the seams. On her feet, incongruous under the skirt, were black socks and a pair of purple and white joggers.

I understood her rationalisation for this attire: all her trousers had got too tight and the skirt was the only thing she could wear comfortably just now. And she needed the nice warm top and the good, supportive shoes. Very sensible of course; just odd-looking.

Not that her friends seemed to care. I observed that those she bumped into as she did her errands didn’t appear to find her outfit remarkable, if they even noticed it at all. (Well, Mur’bah has always had a great tolerance of eccentric dress.) It was obvious that all they saw was her, the person. She was greeted with hugs and kind enquiries as to her welfare. I guess you can afford to be a little weird in the interests of comfort, in a town where people love you and see straight through to your inner being.

All the same, that sudden confrontation in a shop window was disconcerting. I think I’ll at least wear my black shoes next time!

1000 Words A Day

2010-09-01T00:41:00.009+10:00

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. So I publicly committed to write 1000 words a day and immediately became paralysed.

No no, that's not really true; I'm always writing — which is why I thought it would be such a breeze. I write emails, I write verses, I write morning pages, I write notes, I write journal entries.... Alas, for the last few days, even including extraneous things like emails, I'd be lucky to write 200 words some days. You know how it is: life gets in the way.

True, some of my journal entries are longer than 1000 words, and at the time I took on this challenge I had just decided to take a break from poetry and create a journal-cum-memoir. That didn't last very long. The truth is, I like writing poems best of all, and to focus on prose very soon palls. Perhaps I should write my journal in poetry! Many years ago I showed a young man my notebook full of poems and he said, 'It's like a sort of diary in verse.' At the time I found the comment disappointing, but he was probably quite right. Perhaps I should capitalise on it.

But there's another reason why even a poem a day is not a good thing for me to commit to on a regular basis. Prose or poetry, I need to do a lot of editing and revising. The one journal entry I did complete and post here (the previous post) went through about eight drafts first and still it's nothing extraordinary. I have poems galore, but in recent years few of them have been revised. In the WordsFlow writing group, we've decided to up the ante and aim for excellence. A whole heap of adequate but mediocre pieces won't do. Excelsior!

So the 1000 Words A Day Challenge banner has come down. A useful idea, but not for me. If anyone feels it's for them, you can find the details at InkyGirl's blog.

Home

2010-08-25T19:23:00.109+10:00

We are having a second day of taking it easy, flopping around in our nightwear with warm woollies on top. Yesterday we spent most of the day in bed. Our bedroom in this new home has become a sanctuary — even though it’s never completely uncluttered, because we avid readers and compulsive writers keep piling up books and notebooks on the bedside tables. It’s a small enough room to be cosy and big enough not to feel cramped. We look out through one wall of glass on to our private, enclosed little courtyard garden. Though it has been low priority so far and the weeds flourish, the potted geraniums are bursting out of their pots and blooming in bright pink, the big plant in the corner —whose name I’ve never learned in years of caring for it — has glossy new leaves, and the vines are thickening on the fence.

Today we have finally got out of bed, late morning, and sit at our respective computers in our respective offices. This whole house is our sanctuary. Like the bedroom, it is both spacious enough and compact enough, and the offices are not so far apart that we feel disconnected from each other. We get up and wander about between typing, get a cuppa, fetch a book, talk to each other in passing. The cats come and find comfortable spots near us. Usually Levi keeps Andrew company and Freya clings to me, but this varies. Sometimes they wander off to the places they like best of all: Freya on the bed, Levi beside the heater.

We’ve had heavy colds for days. I’m paranoid now about the slightest infection, after Andrew nearly dying of influenza a few weeks ago — but we’ve now had the flu injections for the first time ever, and we’re taking echinacea and zinc. The doctor couldn’t suggest anything else helpful. Giving in to it seems to be working. We try to remember to drink lots of water, we flake out and snooze as inclination takes us — we get tired often — and we avoid anything too energetic. Bare minimum housework, and nothing but pleasurable tasks on computer. The huge, loud, repeated sneezes that shook our whole bodies have pretty much stopped. The aches and pains are less acute.

I realise my body is trying to process and clear some stuff. ‘What are you two unpacking from other homes?’ asks a Reiki Master friend, and mentions a couple of places with unhappy memories for us. She’s right on the button as usual. I have indeed been doing the last of the unpacking and thoughts of those other homes have been arising, and even earlier homes in my earlier lives (as child, as young mother ...). As for Andrew, he has been sorting out his files and boxes of papers at last, and looking through photos; and I realise he has been mentioning his own past homes too. It is as if, now we’re settled in a place that we love and know is permanent, we can allow ourselves to relax enough to release old angst.

I think back on the homes we’ve shared, particularly the ones that weren’t so great. I see how brave and optimistic we were, knowing the drawbacks but — having to be there for a time — actively seeking and even creating positive aspects. We explored our neighbourhoods, found places to go for walks, set up our books and ornaments and our writing spaces ... and sadly, at the worst places, had to leave a lot of stuff in storage. That wasn’t what made them so bad, but it became part of the general dissatisfaction. Without going into ancient recriminations, I could sum it up as difficulties with places that were unsuitable in themselves but all we could find at the time, exacerbated by further difficulties in sharing those spaces with other people — a residential landlady in one instance, fellow tenants in another. As most of our homes have been delightful, we haven’t dwelt on the few bad memories; it seems it’s time to deal with them now.

I seldom remember my dreams these days, but the last couple of nights I’ve had dreams around the theme of home. I remember little of the first, but in last night’s dream I was returning to a large hostel where I have lived in recurring dreams. (In this dream, I didn’t live there all the time; it was a place where I rented a permanent room for times when I might want to stay overnight in town.) It was a while since I’d been there, and there had been extensive remodelling in my absence. I walked along what at first seemed the familiar corridor to my room, looking for the number — but a laundry had been installed halfway along, and girls in undies and hair curlers were dashing in and out to wash and iron their clothes, laughing and chatting to each other on the way. I became confused, and when I got to where I thought my room should be, there was a wrong number on the door.

I decided to leave, and went downstairs to the foyer and then outside. The hostel was on top of a cliff. There was a steep, sandy path leading down to a street below. I stood at the top of it, about to go down, when something made me turn my head to the left to look out over the sea. I gasped at the beauty of the view: hills, ocean, islands, horizon, sky; at once sunny and slightly misty. Some other women came up behind me to go down the path. I stood aside to let one go ahead of me. Two others waited politely for me, but I told them to go on because I wanted to look at the view. They turned to look too. ‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’ one said, before they went on. ‘Isn’t it ever!’ I replied.

I don’t remember walking over to the edge of the cliff top, but next thing I was falling. I was falling very slowly, upright, and although it was a deep drop and I was probably about to die or be seriously injured, I was quite calm. I had some notion of making the most of what might be my last minutes. I kept moving my legs back and forth, with the idea that I might be able to catch the side of the cliff with my heels and find a footing. Another fast forward and I had come to rest at the bottom, sitting in a sandy hollow in the cliff wall, with my feet on one of those tubes that people put under their backs when exercising.

I looked again and realised it was actually a tube-shaped bag with a zip. I opened it and saw jumpers belonging to my [former] husband Bill and our schoolboy sons. [One of the jumpers does exist in real life, but Andrew and I got it in Peru long after Bill was dead and the boys grown up.] I saw that this bag was one of a number of items stowed under a low hedge at my feet. The beach disappeared and I was at home in the back yard. In the dream I knew it as the first home Bill and I and the kids had; now I realise it was actually much more like the home I lived in when I myself was a child.

How should I interpret this? There are suggestions there of several real-life homes besides the ones I mention, but no exact matches. It’s interesting, though, to recollect that I have a sort of parallel life, or more than one, in various series of recurring dreams. I become aware of this whenever I have another of those dreams; it always evokes the recall of others in the sequence. Then I forget again until next time. This time it aroused the waking memory of another series too, where I visit a particular shopping area tucked away behind main streets in a Melbourne suburb. I have a notion it‘s Prahran, but it might be Cheltenham. These dreams also contain a huge, sweeping, curving road I must drive on between this little shopping area and home, and there’s a fork that I have to be careful of because it’s confusing and a bad choice could take me miles in the wrong direction. I’m not altogether sure this is a dream, but it can’t logically be an accurate memory either; there were no such roads approaching Prahran or Cheltenham when I used to drive to either place. It’s more like one of the roads I could take home from Melbourne when I lived at Three Bridges in the Upper Yarra Valley. Maybe it’s a combination of two different recollections, or a dream series that has mixed them up.

[As an aside — I look back in wonder at all the driving I’ve done over the years, in what a variety of places and conditions. It’s amazing because I’ve been so shit-scared of driving most of my life, yet I did so much of it so successfully. Even today I don’t exactly take it for granted, but now that I’m the main driver in the family, I’ve become much more at ease with it. I see (again) that my past self was brave; also that my present self is competent.]

This home we love so much won’t quite accommodate all our remaining possessions; that’s becoming obvious. We’re having to make hard decisions now about things to discard or give away. Perhaps that’s what has led to this mental stocktaking of places I’ve lived, and griefs and trials associated with them, as well as fonder memories and things I find myself proud of. Or perhaps it is the knowledge that we won’t have to move again, and the very pleasure we take in this place, which occasion the looking back and putting into perspective all the ups and downs of the journey that brought us here.

Since I began writing this, our handyman mate Phil has come and put up a blind over the little bedroom window that looks out onto the street. The street is at the bottom of the sloping lawn, beyond our big back gate; even so we felt a bit exposed, and now we’re secure. He hung some canvas panels in the garage, which is taking shape as library / consulting room / temple: paintings of Indonesian dancers, which Bill and I picked up in Bali 47 years ago. I found them rolled up in a plastic bag the other day, in the course of unpacking the last boxes. It’s been years since I had a place to hang them and I’m glad to be able to look at them again.

They and other artefacts from Bali are mementoes not only of travels shared with Bill and our boys, but also of the house we lived in longest, where we first displayed them; the house where the kids grew from kindergarteners to university students.

‘You’ll have to get rid of that,’ said someone decades ago, of my precious coffee table. (I was moving house then, too.) I don’t know why she thought so, and I have it still. It’s big. It has a timber frame with no metal nails, just wooden bolts, and the top is ceramic tiles in burnt orange and darkest brown. (‘Of course she picks the most expensive one in the shop,’ said Bill when we bought it in 1972. And it was, but that wasn’t why I picked it; I just took one look and fell in love.)

The aforementioned residential landlady piled a heap of stored furniture on top of it in her shed when we lived with her — chairs and other tables, boxes full of crockery — even though she knew it was one of my treasures. ‘I thought it was solid,’ she said. It survived, but has been a bit wonky ever since. I don’t let anyone sit on it any more, though it invites sitting. Years before that, my very large dog took a chunk out of the corner one night when he was looking for something to chomp on. I was upset at the time, but it’s hard to notice the missing bit now, and when I do, I smile and think of my beautiful dog. That table has been with me in ten previous homes, and here it still is.

One of the first things we did here was put up pictures. Both our fathers were artists. My favourite painting by my Dad is above my desk. It is of Mt Roland in Tasmania, his and my favourite mountain while I was growing up, and for many years thereafter. (Mt Warning, near my present home, is my favourite now.) Andrew has his father’s etchings in his office and a photo of his father, himself and his brother sitting astride a cannon in a local park where he grew up. He’s at the front, being the littlest. He’s six, and he’s laughing with joy.

When we sit in our armchairs and watch TV in our well-heated house on these cold nights, I think back to evenings by the radio in Launceston when I was a girl, the whole family gathered around the fire. This is safe and warm like that.

Yes, we’ve arrived home: a home that partakes of all the homes before.

A Dear Ghost

2010-08-08T10:31:00.016+10:00

I looked at the date and saw it was his birthday, again. I smiled at my dear ghost and wrote him a little poem about remembering his eyes — his eyes which I always likened to the summer ocean. He was all sun, it seemed to me: light and warmth, shining. Yet in truth he had little warmth or light in his young life, my 24-year-old love who did not live to be 25, choosing to leave eight days earlier.

That was in 1982. This year, 2010, was the first of all the years since then that I missed noticing the anniversary of his death. But my body remembered and gave me a cold. My psyche remembered and gave me a sudden loss of delight. From one moment to the next, the world was drained of all colour, all meaning. I should have remembered then.

After he died I got my ears pierced. Before, I had always thought of that as self-mutilation; afterwards I wanted some visible, permanent sign that everything was irrevocably changed. This time, not consciously, not on purpose, I got my hair cut very short — too short. It will grow again, of course. As for the earrings, they long ago became personal adornment, not a symbol of grief.

On Friday I saw the psychologist. I told her about my present love, my 81-year-old love, coming close to death in the last two months and slowly recovering. I relived my distress and fear. It seemed more than enough to account for my symptoms. I cried in her office for most of the hour and walked out with a new lightness.

Then I was able to recall the recent anniversary: the death that did happen, after which nothing was ever the same again. I was able to see that these two occasions of pain, these two far-apart winters, had become emotionally entwined.

He came to me several times after he died. At first he contacted a psychic friend who would get in touch and tell me the messages; then I began using this friend as a medium, asking questions over a cuppa and receiving what answers there were. Finally I could see and hear him myself, without needing a third party. I was not reconciled to what had happened, but I understood it better. I still took many months to move through the stages of grief, even though I set out to experience them fully. I thought that plunging right in would get me out the other side quicker, and I’m still certain I was right. But it wasn't very quick.

I went for long walks alone, talking to him in my head. My psychic friend told me that our grief keeps the souls of the dead from moving on immediately. ‘Too bad,’ I told my dead love, talking to him in my head as I walked. ‘You chose to go; you owe me my grief.’ I walked through one of the longest, hottest summers on record. I barely noticed the heat.

One day, next autumn, the world regained its radiance. I saw life shining in grass and leaf; the sun and sky had colour. Not that I didn’t still mourn, but I could be in life again; I was back.

For many years it was as others too have described their own situations: not a day went by that I didn’t think of him. Even now, it still happens often. The emotion accompanying the thoughts gradually changed. It’s always love, that doesn’t change; but now I can think of him with happiness. My husband’s recent danger brought back the old pain; I know too well already what it’s like to lose the most important person in my life. Perhaps it’s good that I’ve had a little preview. Last time the death was a shock as well as a sorrow. I sat down with a cup of coffee one Saturday afternoon and opened a newspaper, and there was the headline. (No-one knew that I was someone who might need to have it broken to me ... but there, how do you break such news anyway?) Next time — if I don‘t go first — well, I have been prepared.

Meanwhile, about to go to bed just after midnight last night, I noticed today’s date: his birthday. I’ve come out the other side of grief yet again. I smiled at my dear ghost and wrote him a loving poem, a birthday gift. Did my thoughts call him to me this time too, or was it simply a memory? No matter. Love never dies.

Walking Around Murwillumbah

2010-06-13T11:07:00.013+10:00

It’s a sunny winter Saturday morning, so glorious that it feels like autumn. The little town of Murwillumbah is a bit quieter than it would be on a weekday, though there are still people out and about. It’s not too hard to find a parking space.

Walking up towards the Post Office, I peep into Crystal Treasures next to the Regent Cinema, and wave at Priya, who’s behind the counter today. She waves and smiles back. We’ve known each other a long time, as fellow Reiki channels with mutual friends. If we’d met out in the street, we’d have stopped for a hug; and often do.

Then I come to the tiny vacant block past the NRMA, and there’s a young girl with mysterious cloth bundles of stuff on the ground around her. She’s wearing skin-tight, black three-quarter pants, and a purple singlet top with a black overlay. Her hair is in braids with black and purple ribbons. Around her slender hips she’s twirling a hoop with a big, glittery bow tied on. Practising, I think.

‘I love your hair,’ she exclaims.

It’s very deep purple today. I did the colour yesterday and it was the last of the bottle so I put a bit more on than usual, using it all up.

‘I love your whole outfit,” I say.

We draw closer to each other. She admires my amethyst drop earrings, touching them gently. I tell her a friend made them for me.

‘I have a big thing for purple,’ she says.

‘Oh, me too!’

I ask what she’s up to, and she tells me she’s a performer. She indicates her fire sticks amongst the bundles. We wish each other a good day, beaming, and I move on. There’s a big feather lying right in my path, which I take as a sign from the Universe that this was no accidental meeting. I think that on my way back I’ll give her one of my cards, expecting that by then she’ll be set up and doing her thing in the little vacant block.

In the IGA store, I’m standing at the counter with my purchases and a voice says, ‘Hello, beautiful Scorpio woman!’ There’s Tanya next in the queue, smiling into my eyes. I met her years ago when I was doing psychic readings in the Sunday markets. She consulted me a number of times thereafter, at my market stall and sometimes also for private readings at my home. Over the years I’ve seen her grow from an uncertain, self-doubting girl into a vibrant, self-actualising woman who has solved her dilemmas and no longer feels a need for guidance. We walk out of the shop together, chatting a little, before going our separate ways. She lives close enough now, she says, to walk into town and back. I say that I’m just a bit far for that; it’d be quite a hike.

‘Ah,’ she says, ‘You get to come in and see people and then go back to your lovely quiet.’ She’s got a point.

I walk back past the vacant block, and it’s empty. The performer and all her bundles have disappeared. Now that I come to think of it, it wouldn’t have been a great spot for busking; not many passers-by in that location, on a Saturday morning in Murwillumbah. A lesson: I should have acted on the impulse to give her my card as soon as I thought of it, instead of waiting. Never mind; what is, is — and it’s still a warming memory. If we are meant to connect further, the Universe will arrange another opportunity.

Instead, Del comes walking towards me. I’ve known her since we were in a singing workshop together, oh years and years ago; I can’t remember how many. The workshop didn’t cure my tin ear, but it was lots of fun because Trish, the leader, created all sorts of innovative exercises for us including dressing up, dancing, swimming nude in the local creek, and doing some Goddessy rituals. I made friendships that have lasted ever since.

Del is what you’d call an ‘older woman’ but I have no idea how old. Probably younger than me (almost everyone is, lol). She has looked just the same in all the years I’ve known her: not young, but getting no older in any respect as far as I can see. One thing is different nowadays, though — her hair has a vivid pink streak across the top and front. Del is in a band that plays around town and visits local events such as the Sunday markets. They all dress in glamorous, outrageous costumes of basic black with lots and lots of knock-your-eyes-out red. Each person’s outfit is different, and together they are a joyous, exciting spectacle. Many times in my market days they would parade past my stall, half marching half dancing, playing their instruments, then stop somewhere where there was space to collect a crowd and give a brief performance.

I often wear vibrant colours myself, with lots of red and purple, and these days I have this purple hair which fades to auburn and then cherry between dyeings. Del likes to tell me I should be in the band too, the way I dress. Our affection goes back further than our bright hair days. We too tend to greet in the street with delighted hugs, as we do now.

‘How are you, darling?’ we ask each other. She tells me she’s having a walk in the sun. Like Tanya, she lives close enough to walk into town — and like Patsy, my Chinese-Australian friend whom I bumped into last Sunday when I ducked in quickly (by car) for a few items. I wrote a lune (a form of Western haiku) about that encounter:

Went to town.
There was Patsy walking around
in the sun.

These are people with whom I have seldom socialised. Not that we wouldn’t if occasion arose, but it doesn’t seem to matter. We’re just always thrilled to see each other, and go on our ways warmed by the encounters. It’s one of the great pleasures of Murwillumbah, to have these chance meetings with both close friends and, as today, fond acquaintances. There’s always the moment of pleased surprise, the kiss or hug, the exchange of news great or small, whether we saw each other only yesterday or three years ago. It will be the same with the young performer, if I bump into her again. The link is made.

People frequently ask us how we are liking our new home.

‘We love it!’ we say. ‘And it’s so good to be back in town.’

Occupation: Poet

2010-06-09T15:52:00.005+10:00

My friend Helen Patrice (aka Satyapriya) is at present on retreat somewhere in North America. This is a recent blog post from her, which she says I may share here:

Sitting above the valley of the creek, I am writing in my journal. A woman stops being dragged about the park by her black dog, and we chat. She smiles at me indulgently.
"So, what do you do?"
"I'm a poet."
I let it hang there, for the first time ever. No adding on 'dance tutor' or 'yogini' or 'columnist' or 'single mother'.
Poet.
An even more indulgent smile from her. "And what does your husband think of that?"
It is obvious that, to her, I fancy myself a poet in my off hours, and am a lucky, indulged stay-at-home wife. She is having a day off work while the office hires professional movers to shift everything to a new building. She WORKS.
I do not have a husband. Have not had one for 16 years. I oscillate between wanting one, and not.
The man I am living with these past ten days could pass as a husband if I let him. Very occasionally I think of him that way, when my mind slips out of gear, and I let down my pointed, jagged guard.
"He likes it just fine," I say. "I earn my keep."
I do not earn much from poetry. I earn something from being a columnist. I once was paid $150 for a ten line poem. If I could get that every day, I'd be laughing.
That shuts her up. She sees only that I am sitting in the sunshine, on a yoga mat, looking out over the valley, a packet of cherries and a bottle of water by my side.
She does not see that every day I wrestle with my pen and page to make them sketch out, in wordplay, the feeling in my head. My arm muscles are the match of any man's, so hard is my work. At the end of each day, if I am lucky, is a pale resemblance to what was inside, and I am empty of anything but the touch of the Goddess. If I am not lucky, I have before me a twitching wretched mess that has no life but will not die.
There is no holiday pay, no sick leave, no bereavement days.
I would have no other job.
The woman and her black dog walk on.

******************************

I want to share it because:
a) I think it’s a lovely piece of writing.
b) I like what she says about the job of being a poet.
c) I’m astounded that, in this day and age, the woman who spoke to her would really ask such a question as, ’What does your husband think of that?’ Shocked, I commented that if feminism is not dead, it’s obviously pretty weak. A fellow-Aussie reminded me that such a comment would be unlikely in her neck of the woods, where people would probably be much more interested in the poem being written. True. I acknowledge in relief that it is a most unlikely comment anywhere in Australia, from anyone. I can’t imagine anyone even thinking like that any more. Even so, it still seems amazingly backward for North America, too. Please tell me it’s atypical!

Why Blog My Poetry?

2010-06-08T13:26:00.015+10:00

My blog on MySpace had had 30957 views last time I looked. Those people have given me ‘kudos’ for my writing only 1386 times, and I have received only 2130 comments. Some have been from the same people returning over and over again. Even so, I think that’s a lot more people than would find and like my poetry in any in-print Australian literary magazine.

My MySpace blog includes prose and has been going for four years. On Blogger I have three blogs just for poetry: a haiku page, a page of ‘verse portraits’ and a page for poetry in general. The haiku page was started in January 2007 and has received 736 visitors. The verse portraits began in June 2008 and have had 752 visitors. I started The Passionate Crone, where I post all my other poetry, in May 2006 and it has had 6973 visitors to date (already 30 this month, so far). Again, some are the same people returning many times; some visitors don’t stay to read for very long; and many more visit than actually comment.

These figures are ridiculously small compared to the traffic some other kinds of blogs have, with thousands of hits a day. For poetry, however, it’s a high readership, and it comes from all over the world. I have readers in India, Africa, Argentina, China (to name just a few) and all over Europe, as well as thick concentrations in Australia, New Zealand, all the north American countries, and Britain. This exceeds my wildest pre-internet dreams.

But is it only that I can’t get published in reputable journals? Admittedly I don’t try very often, but when I do, I don’t have any trouble being accepted. (I do, however, prefer online journal publication too, these days.) In previous decades I was widely published in prestigious places; also the people who now comment favourably on my work include poets whose own work I love and admire. Yes, every poetaster can now get a blog and a host of enthusiastic readers to go with it; lovers of real poetry can still discriminate.

There are blogging poets with readerships and reputations far higher than mine. Some of them publish mostly in blogs nowadays; others use their blogs as adjuncts to their print publications. Some of us put our first drafts on our blogs and submit our revised work for publication in journals. Some go straight from blogs to chapbooks, and it seems that enough of their blog readers want to have the work in book form to make that worthwhile.

Somewhere in the mix is performance, for decades a good way of getting your work known and building up a following. It still is, and often the two things go together. Many of the blogging poets I know are also performers. I seldom do that any more, though I was a high-profile performer in the past. I moved to a small town where poetry performances are a few hours’ drive away in various directions. Although from time to time people have tried to get things going locally, so far they haven’t lasted. And I’m older now, and don’t much like driving for hours through the night for any reason. I rely more and more on the blogs.

However, you can surely do both, and submit to journals and publish books as well, and they will all enhance each other. Even I still do a little bit of performing, submit to journals occasionally, and am gradually creating some chapbooks. Blogging doesn’t have to be a substitute for other kinds of exposure, but along with performance it has become one of the first and easiest places to get your work ‘out there’.

It’s good from a reader’s point of view, too. I love being able to read the latest pieces by my favourite poets with just a couple of clicks.

Wendy Rule Concert at The Castle on the Hill

2010-06-04T10:47:00.006+10:00

Last Friday I went with the Beloved Spouse and some dear friends to a Wendy Rule concert, one night only, at The Castle on the Hill. That’s a venue and b&b built by three artists, two of whom are good friends of Andrew’s and mine. It is also their home. (They can truly say, ‘My home is my castle.’) When Thom the poet did a gig there recently, it reminded him of Montsalvat in the Melbourne hills. Indeed it is very reminiscent — but whereas Montsalvat is a Great Hall plus a number of small dwellings and outbuildings, this is all one building, full of comfort as well as artistry.

I’ve adored Wendy’s music for years, but this was the first time I’d had a chance to attend a live performance. I have been astounded to discover how many Aussies don’t know who Wendy Rule is. Hell-o-o-o-! Internationally famous singer-songwriter, with one of the most gorgeous voices around. But of course she’s not mainstream pop. Melbourne people are somewhat more likely to know. She lives in Melbourne when she’s not touring. The Pagan community all know who she is: she is also a very high profile witch, who conducts workshops and is known for casting circle on stage.

It was a cold night, but with many bodies in the room it was soon cosy. The room fits 80 at a squeeze, and the event was sold out. Some of us sat on chairs around the walls; most people brought cushions and filled the floor. We could see glimpses of the dark gardens through the walls of windows. Wendy’s voice, alone and unaccompanied, is even more glorious than on disc. Mostly she played a guitar, several times sang without even that. We all felt it to be a magickal experience, and Wendy loved the venue so much that she wants to come back in a few months. And yes, she cast circle, with incense and song, before she began, and opened it again after the concert finished. When casting, at first she made a mistake in the directions. She giggled at herself and said without embarrassment, ‘I must be thinking I’m in the Northern Hemisphere. Let’s do that again.’

She comes across as warm and real, no visible egotism. She told us she’s just started sewing again, and had made the lovely, floaty, green and gold gown she was wearing. We applauded. (Oh, and did I mention that she’s incredibly beautiful?) She sang a song she had written for her son on his 18th birthday, and mentioned his recent party with ‘a back yard full of teenagers’. She sang a lot of songs from her new CD. This was the very first night of a tour to promote it. And she also did some of my old favourites: Wolf Sky, Animus, Horses.... When we wouldn’t let her go without an encore, she chose an early, powerful piece, Zero.

‘Let’s raise some energy,’ she said at that point. As she sang, we could feel the energy rising. ‘What shall we cast a spell for?’ she asked, adding immediately, ‘I know — freedom!’ And so we did. She chanted the words; we joined our will to hers. ‘Freedom for all living things,’ she declared.

There have been some interesting repercussions. Andrew said he experienced a major shift in knowing who he is. He felt uplifted, and that she had touched his soul with her beautiful songs, performed alone in that magickal venue — an event unique in the whole world. He described his experience in detail next day to a friend who was there too. The friend said, ‘You’ve had a shamanic death’ and proceeded to relate his own very dramatic shamanic death experience after the concert. Both men came out of this with a new freedom from certain oppressive conditions in their lives.

As for me — for four years I have hosted a popular online site called Haiku on Friday at MySpace. It’s been a joy as well as a commitment. Suddenly I realised I didn’t want to keep working within the haiku form; I don’t want to be bound by those particular rules any more. I handed it over to a couple of other haikuists. This morning I visited to cheer them on and contribute not a haiku but another short form called a lune. I noticed that I enjoyed being released from my duty to Haiku on Friday too, liking the freedom to come along as just one of the mob. There was a new pleasure, and leisure, in being on MySpace simply as myself.

Post-Script: In our friends’ photos taken at Wendy’s concert, many spirit orbs are revealed, hovering over us all. One of the said friends has kindly provided the link to the photos on facebook: here.

In the Moment: Poetry with Thom

2010-05-19T23:18:00.020+10:00

‘Zen means now,’ said my Tai Chi teacher this morning. ‘All you have is this moment, now.’

I don’t know if my old friend and colleague Thom would claim to be practising Zen, but he too says exactly that: ‘All you have is this moment, now.’ On Friday I heard him reiterate it in the workshop he gave to WordsFlow writers’ group, and again during his performance that evening at The Castle on the Hill (Uki, Australia). On both occasions he was ably abetted by his pal Bob Mud, poet/musician/mud artist, whom he’s known even longer than he’s known me.

Thom in perfomance; some of Bod Mud's mud art displayed on floor.

I’ve known Thom since he was Tom the Street Poet in Melbourne, handing out flyers of poetry — his own and other people’s — on street corners. He was also Dial-a-Poet; people could phone his number and he’d create lines of poetry for them on the spot. I always thought he had recorded several poetic messages — but no, I found out on Friday that he actually answered the phone personally, in poetry.

Years after we both left Melbourne, I came across him again as Thom the World Poet, living now in Austin, Texas and travelling the world to present and encourage poetry. (And yes, he's changed his name again — so as to remain unattached to identity, I gather.) After marrying an American woman and going to live in Texas, he started poetry evenings in a number of Austin coffee lounges, and was one of four poets who began the Austin International Poetry Festival. These initiatives have grown and grown.

During his performance last Friday evening, he wove in chunks of his life story — but actually it was full of other people’s stories, because that’s what Thom loves to find and share. It’s his way of encouraging us to find and share our own.

He grew up in Brisbane. As a young man in Nimbin at the first Aquarius Festival, he saw all these people sitting listening to the musicians and was suddenly moved to stand up and chant, over and over: ‘This is your life. Don’t waste your time. Get up and dance.’ To his astonishment, everyone did. He thought, ‘This is what I want to do with my life’ — and that’s how he became an improv. poet, often working with bands. On Friday it was Bob who backed him, with various instruments and his ‘soundscape’ recordings of wild birds in the bush.

One band that Thom worked with over the years was Gong. Daevid Allen of Gong came up to see him for a few minutes after the workshop on Friday afternoon, the only time they could manage to connect this trip. Andrea, also of Gong, came to the workshop and then to the performance that night. (I got to know both of them through Thom on his earlier visits to this part of the world.)

Independently of Thom, I’ve become pally with a local muso who moved from England a few years ago to marry a friend of mine. Mic, known as Cosmic, turned out to be a Gong member too, who knows both Thom and Daevid well. He came to the gig at The Castle to reconnect, and to help with the sound system. Thom was visibly touched to have so many Gong reunions in one day.

Mic, Thom and me after the performance at The Castle

Poetry, he once said to me, is the last bastion of free speech, because in our society no-one fears it; the authorities pay no attention to it. It’s where the young in particular can communicate and express themselves freely. The Austin coffee lounges are full of young poets … and older ones. But it’s not violent expression that Thom encourages. On Friday he mentioned that he is not a revolutionary; he tries for evolution. He added that he ‘failed hippy’ — he’s allergic to lentils and he doesn’t smoke dope.

He told us stories of his friend Bob Mud (Bob’s professional name) running a commune in Melbourne for homeless people decades ago, and nowadays showing children how to make art with mud and become close to the earth. Then Bob spoke to us himself about the virtues of mud (you can wash with it, it keeps insects away, it’s free, it has no chemicals) and read us some of his own poems.

Irene, of The Castle, hosted the evening at short notice as a favour to me, after another venue that I was negotiating didn’t work out. I should have asked her first; it was a wonderful setting. And the evening was a revelation to her about what poetry could be. ‘He’s such a showman!’ she whispered to me in admiration, as Thom held the audience enthralled, and, ‘He’s teaching all the time.’

So he was — e.g. in the reminder to live now, to honour this moment, to pay attention and respond to everything in our lives. He doesn’t just promote his own poetry, he hopes to inspire poetry in everyone else too.

He is very inspiring!

When Thom gives a performance, people in the audience get an urge to share their own poetry and music. As always, it happened at The Castle too, in an atmosphere of ease and welcome.

Poetry’s not going to save the world, is it? After that mellow evening, I could almost believe it might. I certainly experienced again its power to nourish individuals.

Thom, who is always making poems, wrote many new ones during this quick visit to Australia. (He was here for family reasons and took the opportunity for some poetry events as well.) Here is one I particularly like, which he wrote as he was leaving the country a few days ago. You have to imagine it half-chanted, which is how he speaks his poems.

Taking Australia Home

packed a rainforest in my carryon

(no liquids allowed!-had to leave @home

boxes of meat pies containing australian fauna

(no worries mate! organic materials A O K!

next-a wild river to swim in(disallowed @Customs

rock(ok),rainbow(yes)serpent(not allowed for export)

began to realise my country failed translation

at least in a moving plane medium

so i carry this dream of my country-

hidden in the crevices of my pocketed mind

and i sit with you around bush campfires exchanging yarns

we both laugh like larrikins

at the disappearance of traditions

first the original people,next the imports

soon even the refugees will be asking to takeaway art

to explain to families why they live on the dry lip of deserts

Shales of initiations remind us of dreaming trails

and if the real will not do-representation will have to

not Parliament as such(nor even Independence)-

just these memories of uniqueness

like screaming cockatoos or seed seeking galahs

like cyclones and willy-willies and old fella yarns

like a land that was here long before and after us

this Dream is yours now-how will you explain this to others?

Thom Moon Bird

You Can Tell a Foodie

2010-05-09T12:16:00.003+10:00

I was thinking about getting up and cutting myself a slice of tasty cheese from the block in the fridge, when a plane went over, sounding ominously close. I had a moment of paranoia, as you do — what if the terrorists are striking and these are my last seconds of life?

My next thought was, ‘Well, I’ll have that piece of cheese before I die!’

So I did. And didn’t die this time. :)

The Woman in the Hat

2010-05-08T13:43:00.002+10:00

One reason I love Murwillumbah is that in some respects it reminds me of the Launceston of my childhood (which has grown and changed since then). There are streets and buildings which ring bells for me, and there’s the way you can’t go to Coles without running into half a dozen people you know and stopping for a chat.

I also love the scenic beauty, the sub-tropical climate, and the fact that this is a powerful energy centre, as many people who live here recognise and even take for granted — a claim I don’t intend to substantiate here and now, but may elaborate on at some stage.

Another reason is that it’s the place where, as I like to tell people, it’s cool to be daggy. (‘Daggy’ is an Australian word that defies translation; the closest you could come might be to translate it as ‘uncool’. So you see, there is a paradox involved.) It’s certainly a place where my spiky purple hair, psychedelic tops and rows of knuckle-duster rings occasion few remarks, all of them approving.

So I thought I’d start an occasional series of Murwillumbah vignettes, to celebrate this unique town.

A joyous encounter stays with me: that woman we saw coming out of Vinnie’s the other day. [The St Vincent de Paul op shop.] We’d never seen her before, in 16 years of walking around Murwillumbah. She was old, small, thin, with a faded taupe shirt, limp black pants, and wispy grey hair — surmounted by the most glorious hat. Its huge brim was covered in colourful flowers; rich, improbable colours. We stopped in delight and exclaimed how beautiful it was.

‘Did you make it?’ Andrew asked. Yes, she had. I told her that I don’t wear hats, but if I did I’d want one just like that.

‘I wouldn’t wear hats either,’ she said, ‘If I had hair like yours.’ She said to Andrew, ‘Isn’t she colourful? You’ve made a good choice!’ And wandered off, tiny as a fairy, dull as depression, yet crowned by this wondrous hat, which looked as though it must be too big but fitted perfectly.

She was a mystery.

Photos of the new home

2010-05-07T18:07:00.001+10:00

Now that we've been here four months, have NEARLY finished unpacking and getting books on shelves, and have already rearranged the furniture somewhat ...

We took some photos. They are stored on Photobucket. Go and have a look! (To be truthful, they were taken a few weeks ago and show our old white car. I must put up some photos of the new red one!)

Homophobia Is Still With Us

2010-04-24T16:15:00.002+10:00

Background (especially for non-USA people). It seems there was a teenage girl who wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom and wear a tux. School said no, girl took school to court, school was deemed discriminatory. School cancelled prom; court said that was OK. Rumour of secret prom to which everyone was invited except girl. Girl expressed her upset on TV.

Well, I think that’s how it goes. I wasn’t there and didn’t see the TV coverage. The first I knew about it was when, on a social networking site — no, not THAT one — someone said the girl was welcome to her alternative lifestyle but shouldn’t be shoving it down other people’s throats.

To which someone else posted the comment below. I shared his outrage, was moved and horrified by his experiences, and loved his eloquence so much that he is now my cyberfriend and has given me permission to repost this:

Being a homosexual is NOT an 'alternative lifestyle'. How dare you? How FUCKING DARE YOU???!!!

Shoving her alternative lifestyle down other's throats? How about you choke on this? While I lay in a darkened room twice a week, being pumped full of poisonous chemicals that just might kill my tumor before either the tumor or the poison kills. oh say ME, I am allowed to have my Mother by my side.

But my boyfriend? (Boyfriend, a high school term if there ever was one, but in West Virginia he will never be allowed to be my husband.) My boyfriend, the man who has stood by my side for three years, who held my left hand while I held my father's hand in my right as they took him off life support, the man who holds my hair out of my face while I puke every morning...you know where he is during my treatments...during my biopsies...

He...is...sitting...down the hall. In a metal folding chair, with no rights whatsoever to hold my hand. To wipe my tears. To be there when I am given life changing and often terrifying news.

And do you know what high school was like for me? A kid who could not hide his sexuality and differentness if he wanted to...in the freaking 80's? I lived thru hell on earth. It was not cool to be gay, yet. All the girls did not want to trade hair tips. No kind hearted jock defended me, because his uncle or someone was gay.

I just had to learn to live alone. I had to survive being spit on, death threats called to my house, my locker having faggot spray painted on it.

I never went to a prom, or homecoming, or even a school mixer. In fact, I spent most of what should have been my 'breakfast club' years on the goddamn streets. Desperately trying to understand why the world hated me and wanted to end me based on something I had no choice in or control off.

No one should demand to change the rules? You tell that the family of Martin Luther King Jr. Tell Mrs. Parks she should not have stayed in her seat.

And while you're at it, come tell my 'boyfriend' to his face that we have no right to 'special treatment'. No right to demand our own way, or rock the boat, or...heaven forbid...make someone 'uncomfortable' because they are forced to be exposed to our 'gay agenda'.

You know what MY 'gay agenda' is? That when and if I lose this fight with my own body, I would like to die in the same arms I have cried myself to sleep in for three years.

But you feel free to say "oh...HIM. He just wants to change things and force his way of life down everyone's throats."

And feel free to go to hell while you're at it.

Age Difference

2010-03-27T23:48:00.001+11:00

'It was a crappy film,' he said after we finished watching.

'It was a wonderful film,' I said.

It was the third time I'd seen it, his second. We both saw it when it came out, in 1969 (though not together; we didn't know each other then). I've appreciated it more each time.

'What did you think was so wonderful about it?' he asked.

'Why did you think it was crappy?' I asked.

I said it was the scenery, the music, the commentary on that era.

He said he conceded all that but he supposed it offended his sense of morals.

(I was only upset because this showing was cut to omit the crucial disclosure of a certain robbery. How could they do that?)

Ah well, he was 40 when it first came out; I was 30. It makes a difference. I knew people like those portrayed — well, like them in some respects. And that film was what made me fall in love with Harley Davidsons. Now you know what I'm talking about, don't you? Yes, Easy Rider.

It's been a long, long time, but in the scene where Captain America tells the young lawyer, 'Hold it in your lungs longer', I was surprised by a momentary wish.

It's also a bit of a shock to realise I have middle-aged friends who were mere infants back then, and perhaps won't know what I'm talking about. Let alone the young ones who weren't even born.

Looking it up afterwards on Google to check some details, I learn that Dennis Hopper has, only an hour ago, received a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in a ceremony where he was surounded by close friends including Jack Nicholson. He is 73 and he has terminal cancer.

NaPoWriMo

2010-03-26T08:13:00.017+11:00

Or actually IntPoWriMo* as I'm not of the nation that has National Poetry Month in April.

Whatever you call it, I've decided I'm doing it. Other Aprils recently I've participated in the Poetic Asides Poem A Day challenge hosted by Robert Lee Brewer; and my first online experience of this kind, also repeated since, was the September month of poetry at Poewar, hosted by John Hewett. Both great fun and inspirational. Robert and John, in their respective months, offer prompts for participants.

NaPoWriMo is simpler, and perhaps more challenging — just write a poem a day.

They'll be on my Passionate Crone blog. See you there in April!

*(International Poetry Month)

Anniversary Reaction

2010-03-22T08:12:00.003+11:00

I wonder why the son from whom I am estranged is so much on my mind just lately. After all, I did a massive tie-cut, and the predominant feeling has been huge relief to have that man out of my life at last. When I think of the man, there is not much resemblance to the child.

Then I realise that it's the child who is coming back into my mind just now, and the reason becomes obvious. His birthday is coming up at the end of the month. Naturally I am going to have thoughts of him, and can no doubt expect them around this time every year. It is the same with those who have died; the people crucial to us float back into consciousness around the time of important anniversaries — births, deaths, marriages ...

I think I see with hindsight the tiny signs that pointed to his mental illness. But it's all so speculative. In many ways he was a dear litle boy too, and a nice lad growing up — 'a wonderful young man' as he is remembered by some of my friends who knew him then. Yet always troubled perhaps, now that I look back; always trying to make the world over into some better way that he knew it should be. Well, idealism is a good quality, and one he might well have imbibed from both his parents, but being certain of rightness in all things is quite another matter.

The surprise for me, looking back, is to perceive that loving parenting isn't necessarily enough. We were imperfect parents of course, and there are things I wish I could go back and do differently, but I always thought we gave them a firm foundation of love and that it would surely keep them sane and strong.

Well, I dare say it's useful to have these thoughts occasionally, and put it all into perspective a little more.

Thaw

2010-03-01T17:07:00.000+11:00

Ruth's diary is the new novel by Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free.
Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow here.
*
These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.
The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.
I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.
So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?
Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat; books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.
Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about; princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.
I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say; ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for’, before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.
Continue reading tomorrow here...

Farewell, my favourite Doctor

2010-02-22T20:59:00.000+11:00

Finally Australia has seen the episode of Dr Who in which David Tennant bows out. (*Sob!*) And a corker of an episode it was, too. Lovely to see some of the recent companions also, and above all my favourite (not-so-recent) companion, Sarah Jane Smith. I am cross that we don't get her 'Further Adventures' in Oz.

I know, I know, Christopher Eccleston was a superb Doctor, and I still remember both Tom Baker and John Pertwee very fondly — but oh, David Tennant made the role his own, abetted by some terrific scripts and supporting casts.

Luckily our glimpse of the next incarnation suggests he's not too far from Tennant's portrayal in looks or persona.

Now we wait, and wait, and wait.

A Departure

2010-02-08T21:00:00.000+11:00

The first wife of my Spouse died early yesterday morning. Second Stepson (their youngest child) phoned us. I greeted him joyfully, then, hearing his tone of voice, said, ‘What?’ — knowing already what it must be. She had been ill for some time. She died at home, peacefully.

We offered to let his brother and sister know. These were all, of course, distressing phone calls. As it turned out, they involved breaking the news separately, ourselves, to Grandson, who is in his late teens and was very close to that grandmother. Everyone’s upset of course, and everyone’s coping as best they can.

Spouse was grumpy all day yesterday. He’s a bugger sometimes for not admitting to his feelings. I asked what was going on, having a darn good idea. He responded with the usual ‘nothing’ and ‘I don’t know’ and got even angrier. Finally, last thing at night, when I told him off for avoidance and for going crook at me when it wasn’t my fault, he looked within and admitted it was as if part of him had gone too. She was his first love, the mother of his children; they had shared things with each other that no-one else now will ever know. Even though it’s many years since he had feelings for her, they were strong once. It‘s as if some aspects of his past just got wiped out.

The strange thing is that he slept most of the day before she died. I put it down to his being 81, and having just had two big days. We went out for lunch on his birthday, then saw Avatar in 3D, which meant travelling for 45 minutes each way. That was Thursday. Friday was our day at the WordsFlow writers’ group, now half an hour from home; also we spent some hours before and after sorting out his medications with the old and new pharmacists and doctors, as there had been some kind of a glitch somewhere in the transfer process. All that running around, I thought. He usually has a daytime sleep, but not all day! Even odder, he was not wide awake all night afterwards, but slept peacefully as if he had not already spent most of the day sleeping, with brief interruptions for meals.

We didn’t know then that First Wife was busy doing her dying. I am thinking now that perhaps his energy was being drawn on. It tends to happen with Reiki Masters. Perhaps, in this case, Spouse had some soul agreement to do this. We were on amicable terms with First Wife, and she knew of our healing work. She knew we were willing to send her energy during her illness. Perhaps on some level she reached out for support to the man she once relied on. Or perhaps Second Stepson was sending out an energy request unconsciously, to help cope with his mother’s departure. Maybe, on the other hand, the Universe simply arranged for Spouse to have extra rest so as to cope with his own emotional reaction. It just seems too much of a coincidence to be coincidental, that’s all.

He was loving and grateful last night, after I finally got him to talk it out a bit. Today he’s bad-tempered again. I fantasise about a swift kick, but instead suggest he writes out his feelings about First Wife’s death. ‘It’s our therapy, after all,’ I point out. ‘We are writers.’ He mutters that he supposes he could do that, and doesn’t.

Soon he’s spoiling for a fight. His voice is full of accusation.

‘If I’d known you were going to do washing today, I’d have put my shorts in that are so dirty.’ (Wearing them.) ‘Anyway you haven’t mended the others.’

I remind him that I do washing every second day, and that ‘the others’ have a zip which is stuck tight and needs to be professionally replaced.

‘What are you proposing to do about lunch?’ (Oh here we go again, I think, with the ’no food in the house’ paranoia.)

Me: ‘Could you take the anger out of your voice?’

Him: ‘Well you seem to have completely lost the plot about food.‘

He gets the fight.

Me: ‘For God’s sake, you’re a grown man. We’ve got this, this and this in the fridge. Eat it! Feed yourself! Don’t worry about me, I’ll have something later.’ Plus a few choice words about the fact that he never does the washing nor works out the menus. He storms out and buys us some takeaway salad. I complain when I find out it’s a chicken salad, and I needn’t have cooked eggs to go with it. He sighs. I tell him not to start things he can’t finish; two can play the blame game and I’m probably better at it than him.

The woman whose death sparked this charming scenario kicked him out when their youngest was seven, and hooked up almost immediately with the man who was to become her second husband. He, long deceased now, was abusive to the kids, I gather. Anyway Second Stepson begged to go and live with Spouse, who was working full time and didn’t see how he could manage a seven-year-old, but they became very close as a result. The older two also left and came to him eventually. They were all grown up and independent by the time I came on the scene.

By the time I met First Wife, she was single again. Spouse loved to recount the story of how knocked out by her beauty he was when he first saw her, and how assiduously he had to court her before she finally agreed to marry him. I was secretly gratified to discover that she was older than me, and no beauty any more.

At a family party, I heard her discussing politics and loved both her ideas and her way of expressing them. She came across as vibrant and dynamic that night.

‘How could you leave this wonderful woman?’ I asked Spouse.

‘Hey, don’t put that out there!’ admonished a friend. (But she needn’t have worried.)

Later, First Wife confided how embittered she felt, having been left with only $11,000 from her second marriage. I bit my tongue. I had recently come out of my own second marriage as a bankrupt. I thought what a lot I could have done with $11,000. Nevertheless we quite liked each other, or so it seemed to me. She asked me for a psychic reading as to whether she would ever meet another partner and be happy. I told her she needed to learn to relate happily to herself first, and indicated some ways she could go about it. I refrained from saying that I didn’t see much chance of this happening. It didn’t.

Spouse and I moved interstate, and saw her seldom thereafter. I think she went off me when I avowed a warm friendship with a family member she had no time for. She became suspicious of both Spouse and me. We never did work out what her fear was, but things she said about us got back to us (people are so kind, aren’t they, passing on such remarks?). But when we did meet at family events, we greeted her normally and were soon on friendly terms again.

I get on very well with two of her children most of the time, and with the other all the time. Her grandchildren have never known Spouse and me except as a couple, so to them I’m ‘Nana’, a third grandmother. I’ve seen more of the little girls — who are also geographically distant — than she did, and Spouse and I are probably closer to them than she was for that reason. She and Grandson, though, saw a lot of each other from his infancy and were, as I said, very close. I think he was the light of her life.

I have the impression that she experienced her life as predominantly sad, and I’m sorry about that, as I would be for anyone.

Really, I hardly knew her.

The Tooth Fairy (with a difference)

2010-01-30T07:40:00.004+11:00

Dear People, I am raising funds to help a friend get some dangerous mercury amalgam fillings removed from her teeth as soon as possible, by the safest possible method. It's a costly procedure. Her circumstances are such that she feels she cannot afford this any time soon; she is already paying off regular dental work.

As a Reiki Master, I have seen plenty of evidence over the years of the serious health damage such fillings can cause. In my observation they are always a big factor in chronic fatigue, for one thing. As long as they remain in the body, they continue to cause trouble and any healing work is only temporary — because they continue to leach new amounts of poisonous mercury into the body ongoingly.

I was so shocked and horrified to learn that my friend had any, that I decided to swing into action this way. (My own circumstances being such that I can't just gift her whatever it would take, all by myself.)

If you think you can help, here are some ways:

1) Send a donation to my Paypal account, marked Tooth Fund. Paypal address: rosemary.lifemagic@gmail.com Never mind if it's only a small amount; every little helps.

2) You might prefer to book a psychic reading with me, and I'll put the fee into the fund. Readings can happen by email, Skype, or in person if you happen to live near me. $100 for one hour, $50 for half an hour. (Aussie dollars if you live in this country; otherwise US dollars.)

3) Say some fervent prayers and/or send energy to the situation and/or wish my friend well. I know that these things too are of real help.

My friend doesn't yet know what I'm up to on her behalf, but will be informed shortly.

Thanks to you all for reading this far!

Farewell JD

2010-01-29T19:30:00.000+11:00

RIP J.D. Salinger who never conformed nor played the celebrity game. Thank you for 'Catcher'. I still have my treasured copy, decades later.

The (New) Move

2010-01-19T16:20:00.003+11:00

It went easily, despite heavy rain at the time, and we love the place. It’s in a tree-lined cul-de-sac, high out of flood range, and very quiet despite the presence of young families. We look out on trees and hills.

Many people hate suburban living. I’ve lived on rural properties and in the inner city, and both are very good; but, moving here, I realise I also love suburbia. I grew up in the suburbs, lived in a colourful suburb whilst attending University, worked in suburbia for the most part, and raised my kids there too. Whether treed, bayside, or high-density, I experience the suburbs as friendly. The neighbours in our new street wave and smile when they see us. It’s nice, and just enough. Murwillumbah has always reminded me in some ways of the Launceston I grew up in; this street particularly so.

Some of the plans for the new home changed suddenly, e.g. when the removalists said, “That cupboard won’t fit through that door.” It was obvious from the start that, as always, our car would be parked in the open. The garage will have to be library, temple and consulting room. At the moment it’s still full of boxes, but at least the bookshelves are up around the walls. We even have some bookshelves in the house, in Andrew’s office and in the living-room. We’ve gone from three bedrooms to two, so Andrew’s office is also the spare room, with the fold-out couch that’s our spare bed. We’ll only be putting visitors up for a night or two now, not indefinitely — not necessarily a bad thing! My office is a desk in the living-room, because I quite like to be on the computer and watching telly at the same time, whereas Andrew sometimes wants peace and quiet while he works. (I trained myself many years ago to be able to create poems in the midst of family noise and activity.)

We miss our air conditioning but the electric fans are doing a good job. The convenience of being only a few minutes out of Murwillumbah is wonderful. We’ve already found a doctor and a chiropractor good enough to stop us missing the excellent people we saw in Pottsville. We did have notions of continuing to travel there to see them, but then Andrew developed galloping gastro for a week, and I did my back in. It became obvious that driving for half an hour to another town for treatment was not the greatest idea we ever had.

Poor Levi dislodged one of the metal bars in his leg. We weren’t initially able to make the new place as safe for him as the old one, and he was apparently starting to feel friskier. He must have managed to climb on something at night while unsupervised. Next morning he had a pronounced limp and, it turned out, a heavily bruised belly. How we didn’t hear him and wake up, we’ll never know. So, back to the vet, and the pin was pulled out. He still has another, which must remain there until the beginning of February. He’s not looking inclined to do any more climbing; however he’s mad keen to get outside — which is not going to happen until after his next op and recovery. Apart from that, both cats seem very happy and settled here. Freya has been able to explore the outdoors, and I’m sure she brings him reports.

Getting reconnected to the internet has been another saga; meanwhile I‘ve been glad of free access via the local library, albeit with time limitations. We finally ditched the incompetent server we had, and now have a new wireless connection, as of just this afternoon. Whoopee!

New Era

I came to a momentous decision — no more psychic readings at the Sunday markets. I haven’t done any since just before the move, being too occupied, and found myself reluctant to resume due to the state of the old bod. My back’s coming good after several chiropractic adjustments, but I was shocked that it went out at all after what I regarded as fairly mild exertion. Maybe I twisted the wrong way, or too far, when lifting something – or maybe it’s time to acknowledge that I’m 70, ridiculous as this seems to me. Anyway the thought of loading my stall into the car, getting up at 5 am next day and driving for half an hour, setting it all up, sitting for a few hours (which tends to make me stiff these days) and then breaking it all down, reloading the car, driving home, unloading ... well, it suddenly didn’t seem very appealing, regardless of the fact that I’ve done it happily for years and years.

The strange thought came to me that it might be time to retire from this service. Then I looked at the financial aspect. The market takings used to be an essential supplement to the Age Pension, but now that our rent is considerably reduced we don’t have the same need. On the other hand, I now have to declare any casual income to the Housing Dept. so that a percentage can be added to our rent. Not to do so would constitute fraud! When I think of my average market earnings — not huge, as I’m essentially selling units of time and there are only so many available during the market hours — and then deduct petrol, stall fee and the percentage that would go towards our rent, I’d get about $50 on a good day. Not worth it for all that effort.

It’s only the market work I’m dropping. I’ll still be available for phone, Skype or email readings, and will continue to see clients in person at my home or theirs. But, as my long-term readers know, I’ve always particularly loved the market work, which hasn’t been primarily about the money but part of my service to the Universe. Not that I did it for free. Like most people, I work in order to earn money; it’s just that I made a commitment to myself long ago that I would only work at jobs I loved. (Or, as someone later reframed it for me: “do only the things that truly excite me ... and be of service.”*) This does sometimes reduce the possibilities for money, but life’s too short, I reckon, to spend it doing things one dislikes. At the market I always asked for clients ”who want and need what I have to offer” and was continually astounded at the way people were brought from all over the world to my daggy little stall, to receive what only I, with my particular skills and life experience, could give them. I’d have gone right on doing the markets if this latest move hadn’t taken such physical toll. That gave me the chance to stop and look at the whole situation. I found myself unexpectedly thrilled and happy at the idea of stopping this work I’ve loved for so long — and which, according to feedback, I’ve done so well. That had to be a sign. I think it was Thich Nat Han who said, “You know you’re on track by the aliveness you feel.”

Just to be quite sure, I consulted my beautiful Rumi cards. Using this oracle instead of something at which I’m adept, such as Tarot, is like asking another person – a wise other person. I wanted some “outside advice” so as not to risk influencing the answer. I did a simple past/present/future reading and this is what I got:

What brought up the present situation? (The past.)

A “Love” card:

Open your heart, and you will hear the lutes of the Angels.

Love establishes for you a direct connection to heaven, to the Divine.

[Yes. Sometimes other clairvoyants would walk past while I was doing a reading, and feel impelled to come back and tell me they could “see” my direct connection to Source. I would consciously and deliberately open my heart chakra to work in the energy of Unconditional Love, which I believe is what made that connection possible. The angels were always present and often gave me messages for my clients.]

The present situation.

A “Birth” card:

The fragrance, my friend, that floats to you this moment streams from the tent of the secrets of God.

Your life has reached a decisive and very positive turning point.

[I did indeed feel that I was being intuitively guided to stop the market work now. And what is intuition but the voice of God? This card was my direct answer, I thought — for how can there be a turning point if one goes on doing the same thing? Good to know that the change is so positive!]

The future, and how to deal with it.

An “Ordeal” card:

You’ll only enjoy the City and your relations,
After enduring all the griefs and ordeals of exile.

After all you have been through, joy and prosperity will taste even better.

[Well, we have been through a thing or two, and have learned how to survive. And although Murwillumbah is just a country town, we have come in from the seaside village to a more urban setting. It’s nice to be assured of joy and prosperity now, to which the market work will evidently be irrelevant.

Or does the “exile” refer to our new difficulties in getting internet connection? Don’t ask! It’s becoming another saga, but the details are petty. Meanwhile there’s the library, and my memory stick for transferring pre-written blog posts.]

You know, a funny thing happened when I transferred files from my old computer to the new laptop. The only things I somehow managed to lose irretrievably were copies of psychic readings done by and for me, some of them dating back years. “No accidents”?

I expect the Universe has some other work for me now, which will be revealed in time. It’s exciting to begin a new era!

*In full, a life-transforming promise one may choose to make to oneself: “I promise with all my heart and soul and love for myself and the world, that from now on I will only do the things that truly excite me ... and be of service.” – Bashar, channelled by Darryl Anka.

Look what I got!

2009-12-22T22:22:00.011+11:00

A special gift from some special friends, who live in San Diego but I think source these artefacts from South America (she is Guatemalan by birth). He has a lot of photos of them on his facebook page. I'm not into skulls; most of them leave me cold. But I found this piece intriguing when I first saw it photographed many months ago, and now that it has come to be with me, I have fallen in love with it. It is by me all the time, and I can't resist touching and holding it often. It's malachite, a large piece, with the natural markings used brilliantly by the carver to create the skull shape. I photographed it with a small piece of malachite beside it for comparison.

Packing for a house move, I haven't time to tune in properly; but can feel energy and bonding. A most amazing object! I think it must be very old; the surface of the stone is quite pitted. Skulls like this were made by tribal people long ago, as portals and talismans.

I believe it's meant to represent an extraterrestrial skull. At first I thought the piece on top was a head-dress; but no, I think it's part of the anatomy. It seems to be androgynous, as the energy sometimes feels female, sometimes male.

Have to find out more from my friends when I can, but they're busy having a baby any minute, so I might have to wait till later.

Today, at our Litha celebration, coven members tuned in to see what we could pick up. Ancient and extra-terrestrial we all got, in various ways. In addition, one person kept seeing high peaks, another saw a woman with very long hair, I saw youngsters who seemed to be members of the tribe who made it. I also felt that strong tingling at the temples which signals expansion of consciousness, but pulled myself out of the meditation as we didn't have time available for such deep work.

There's much more to uncover, I'm sure. I'm taking a little time out from packing just now, to celebrate receiving such a wondrous gift. Further explorations must wait until we're in our new home.

We're Moving Again!

2009-12-16T21:50:00.005+11:00

Being Age Pensioners, we’ve been on a waiting list for many years for low-rent accommodation via the State Housing Department, and finally we’ve got it! Although we have enjoyed being here on the coast for the last five and a half years, we’ll be very happy to move nearer our beloved Tweed River again, and our favourite magic mountain, Mt Warning (so called, we are told, because it was the first thing Captain Cook saw when approaching this coast). In the new home we’ll say hello to the mountain every time we drive out of our street, and again when we drive back.

We saw the outside of the place on Sunday (because we couldn't wait) and the inside today, and we love it! It’s the front unit of a duplex, in a quiet, leafy court. We met the lady in the back unit, who is very nice. She has a huge, thriving rosemary bush. I like having my namesake plant where I’m living, and it’s been a while since that happened. (It’s a sign! It’s a sign!) There are parks nearby for walking, a big local store and a petrol station, and we’re just a few minutes out of town. We’ve lived around the town of Murwllumbah for the last 16 years, ever since we left Melbourne and moved to this part of the country. Our present location is the furthest out we’ve been.

When we moved to the coast, after loving the hills for about nine years, we said, “Yes, it’ll be good to be near the ocean again for a while” and so it has been – but note the “for a while”. Lately I’ve started itching to be closer to the mountain once more; I've begun to miss driving along the river. ( I grew up in Tasmania, a tiny island of mountains and rivers, small towns and villages, forests and rural districts, where you can’t go far in any direction without meeting the ocean. So I love all those things. (I only didn’t like the cold weather!))

We need to be in asap. If Housing Department properties stand vacant too long, people start complaining. We’ll have to break our lease here, though not by much. It was 21st January that we moved in here. The Department has written us a letter to show our landlord, saying we are required to be in before the end of the month. In fact, with Christmas coming up, it could be hard to get a removalist, so they will probably be a little flexible. Still, it’s all about to happen, and I don’t expect to be online much for a while. We’ll hope that our service provider doesn’t take so long over the transfer this time! After that – well, it’s a ten year lease, so we’ll settle down to a new era of stability and security.

Last time all the packing and cleaning half-killed us, and a number of our friends too. We moved in and went to bed for a few days! So this time, with a bit more money stashed away than we had then, we are going to get a carrier who will do all the packing for us, and we’ll have this place professionally cleaned. I still have to wash curtains, and go through my great hoard of papers to see what to chuck out. My darling can’t believe I am finally going to let go of the 15th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1977 – but only because I found out I can now get it all and more on DVD.

We’ll actually be only a half hour’s drive from where we are now, and the Neighbourhood Centre here will pay my travel exes to stay on as a volunteer, continuing to facilitate the writers’ group and fill the role of Secretary of the Management Committee. Just when I am about to leave, I am also thinking of starting a spiritual development group and a Mac users’ group! Both have been requested, particularly the spiritual group. For a few years now, people have been coming up to me and asking if I’d start one. Finally, as I’m about to leave the area, I get my act together!

We are also going to keep seeing the chiropractor here: best one we ever found – and we’ve found some good ones. And we’ll continue to see the psychologist here too. Every time I start going into nostalgia about the things we have to leave behind, I stop myself and say, “Hang on, you’ll be coming back twice a week!”

Poetry and Other Adventures

2009-12-15T11:05:00.008+11:00

At a recent session with PsychLady I spoke of my passionate love of beauty, all kinds of beauty, and my sorrow at not being beautiful myself. I explained that this is why I began writing poetry when I was very young – I wanted to add to the beauty of the world, and for me poetry was the most beautiful thing a human could create.

She pointed out the obvious: that poetry is my beauty, and the expression of my beauty. I had to admit that if I could swap right now and become a famous beauty for the way I look but lose the poetic talent, I would not swap, not for a moment. For homework she gave me an assignment to write a poem about poetry being my beauty. I didn’t write it until a week later, just before my next appointment with her, but it had been germinating away in the subconscious all the while.

What I wrote was Living Beauty. I was very pleased with it. It didn’t need revising, and I had done risky things with repetition and made them work. In various ways it felt like a quantum leap. Other people liked it too, and “got” it – even poetry haters in my writers’ group. All very satisfying!

Perhaps, after that, the only way was down? Anyway, a couple of days later I started looking through the last four years’ output (since publication of the last book). It was horribly disconcerting! As described in Crisis, I had suddenly lost the ability to “hear” my own poetic voice. I knew I’d been in a rather plain and prosey phase for some time, but I had thought it was still working as poetry. Now, it was as if I was coming to the poems as a new reader – and I couldn’t find any rhythm in them, any music. The language seemed ridiculously banal. Flaws leapt up and hit me in the eye. I realized that I’ve been churning stuff out quite prolifically, posting first drafts and never going back and working on them further. As for the things I had filed as drafts for later revision, they seemed pathetic, not worth trying to do anything with.

This was of course horrifying. My identity and self-worth are bound up with the poetry. And I wondered, in shock, if the friends who had made positive comments on my efforts were just being kind. You must have had the online experience of seeing some self-deluded folks who write atrocious verses, and all their friends rush to comment how wonderful their work is! Could that be me too, after all?

Then I noticed that I was pretty apathetic about things in general. None of the things that normally bring me joy seemed even vaguely interesting. I recognized what I was feeling as the way other people have described bouts of depression – something I have been lucky enough to have avoided so far. I don’t know which came first, the mood or my inability to like my poems. (“So,” said PsychLady yesterday, “You have gone from denying your beauty to denying your poetry too, which is the expression of it.”)

I’m grateful indeed for friends who read Crisis and rushed to disagree with it! Canadian poet Pearl Pirie said particularly wise things:

yeah, that's a familiar sensation/perception for me.

sometimes it's lasted months but it passes. generally means I'm breaking thru to some new inner level, a reorientation as part before growth phase.

a lot of stock is placed in the world poem. communication matters. call it what you will in finer level after that.

Finally some perspective re-emerged, and I realised that many of the people who praise my poetry happen to be poets whose own work I admire. That has to count for something! It’s a very different thing from lovers of the trite and sentimental praising doggerel. And my non-poet readers are people whose taste and intelligence I respect in other matters. Sorry, everybody, for insulting your judgment even briefly (not to mention your authenticity).

That being said, it wouldn’t hurt at all to go into a revision phase now and get some of those poems to the absolute best they can be. I thought I would take a sabbatical from writing new stuff (apart from the haiku and tanka, which whole groups of people use to spark their own). But PsychLady said the same as some of my friends: “Write about the emptiness, the nothing, the no-words”. Well, I would if I could, but I think it might have gone already!

And the other adventures? We’re liable to be moving house again real soon! But this post is long enough. I’ll write about the move tomorrow. Suffice to say, we’re excited. This shift is the one we’ve been waiting for.

Margaret, Are You Grieving?

2009-12-10T23:36:00.000+11:00

I thought it was my dear husband's ageing, deterioration and inevitable death I was grieving for these recent months. And that's true enough.

I just noticed that it's also my own ageing, deterioration and inevitable death that is causing me grief.

It is myself I mourn for.

********************

And no, my name is not Margaret. But I expect many readers will recognise the quotation:

Spring and Fall
By Gerard Manly Hopkins

To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Cat Update

2009-12-03T22:26:00.002+11:00

Well he's home. We are to keep him very quiet for 10 days, confine him to the spare room rather than let him negotiate our split level floors, make sure he doesn't jump, and definitely not let him outside. So the first thing that happened was that he wriggled out of our grasps and flew out the bedroom door before we could close it, down the split level and out through the cat door into the garden. By which time I was in tears. Fortunately he didn't feel like going any further and we carted him back inside. He has now settled down, and has claimed that spare room and ordered Freya out of it!

Some hours later, he is vastly reassured, purring happily after lots of loving, and happy to rest on the soft new rug we got him today.

He is still somewhat uncomfortable though. We have pain-killers and antibiotics for him, and his stitches come out in 10 days. He hasn't got a bandage on his leg, as he was so annoyed by it that the vet decided to take it off again.

So wish us luck with keeping him quiet!

And many thanks to all for the well-wishing, prayers and healing vibes.

(I just now picked up the cat carry case, to put it away. Freya, who was hassling me for more dinner, suddenly slunk away quietly and hid under the furniture. Wherever he’s been, she doesn’t want to go!)

Sad Days

2009-11-30T12:38:00.006+11:00

Injury

Our cat Levi needs surgery. We took him to the vet on Saturday after noticing that he was limping. He has a badly damaged knee with torn ligaments. The vet described it as “an athletic injury” which might have happened after jumping. It’s a thing that sometimes befalls cats, apparently. She said it’s the sort of thing that could happen to us if we were walking on the beach and put our foot in a hole; the foot gets stuck and the body keeps going. Levi is quite athletic, although he’s a big boy and is eleven and a half years old. He had been particularly active just lately until this happened.

He’s been anaesthetized, x-rayed and put on a drip, and will probably be operated on tomorrow. He is going to have a pin in his knee for eight weeks, after which it will be removed and he should be back to normal movement. (Yes, it’s expensive, but we can pay it off.)

We went to visit him today and give him some petting. He was ecstatic to see us! I used a Reiki II technique to explain to him what was going on and what would be happening, and that he’d be home soon to take it easy awhile and get lots more petting. He settled down calmly after that.

Death

Last night an email came to tell me and others of the sudden death of Elisabeth Frauendorfer (in Austria, where she lived). Elisabeth was the founder of an advanced healing modality known as MPRUE (Magnussa Phoenix Reiki Universal Energies, the prerequisite for which is that one is already a Reiki Master).

Although we never met in person, Elisabeth was a dear friend and teacher to me and Andrew for a number of years, and to many others. She kept in touch with her numerous friends and students via online groups as well as personal contact, and encouraged us to share her passion for research into all aspects of healing.

She was a very giving person, and was blessed with many talents including artistic gifts. At present many of us are feeling huge grief. I'm uncontrollably tearful.

All we know is that she died in hospital on November 5th, aged only 52. Her brother sent out a very brief email, which reached one of her students and thereby the rest of us. I imagine her family is still in shock too. I’m not aware of any recent indication of illness, and can only speculate that she may have suffered an accident.

She is irreplaceable. However, those she trained plan to continue her work to the best of our abilities.

ANOTHER new computer

2009-11-16T14:39:00.000+11:00

Last Thursday, it being not only my 70th birthday but also Pension Day, I opened my internet banking to do the usual paying of bills etc. – to see that First FosterSon and FF Daughter-in-Law had deposited a large sum of money. It was labelled “Christmas” by which I understood it to be for both of us, but I thought how clever of them to time it so perfectly to arrive on my birthday morning, not to mention just before the 16th wedding anniversary. Turned out they hadn’t had those events in mind, and didn’t know how long the money would take to arrive anyway; they just thought it was time to send us “a little something”. (Their idea of a little something is our idea of huge.)

How joyous and exciting to pay off some large debts which kind people had been letting us chip away at gradually. (Car repairs, chiropractor, phone/internet provider, pharmacy....) With childish pleasure I put petrol in the car and filled it right up, something I’ve longed to do. I stocked up on supplies for the birthday/anniversary party. And, having transferred the computer fund to Andrew for a “previous generation” MacBook, I suggested he phone his older son (my First Stepson) who was handy with likely links when I was looking for one. I had a quick look in JB Hi-Fi while I was up that way in the morning, but the laptops there were fearsomely expensive.

First Stepson said to his father, “Why do you need a laptop? Are you going somewhere?” and explained that with a laptop you pay extra for the miniaturisation and portability. “Go for an iMac,” he advised. There wasn’t much persuasion needed. He Googled Apple resellers for us and found two quite near, so off we went – to find one didn’t deal with Macs at all, despite the listing, and the other one didn’t even exist. It was getting late. We made a snap decision to go to JB HiFi, and there was a lovely NEW 21-and-a-half-inch iMac for $1589 (same price as the tiny 13-inch laptop). So we got it. Just like that. Gee it felt good! The salesman threw in surge protector, firewire cable and screen cleaner for free.

Dear people who generously made donations towards our computers, I hope you don’t feel that it constitutes false pretences if we now transfer them to the car fund. The present vehicle is starting to die, just as the antiquated computers were.

The birthday party was Saturday, and the new machines were proudly demonstrated to guests who were almost as thrilled and impressed as we are.

I had said on the invitation, “No presents”. People either brought flowers instead or ignored it altogether and gave me books and hand-made treasures (a crystal bracelet, a crochet bag for holding loose crystals). One friend insisted that I must have $70 on my 70th birthday, $1 for each year of my life. The good cooks brought Thai curry and jasmine rice, cupcakes with purple icing, and a luscious chocolate birthday cake. Three people contributed extra software we wanted for the new computers.

And my very best present of all came from a friend who phoned up on the actual day of my birthday and told me, in tears, how much my poetry moves her. What more could I ever ask?

New toy

2009-11-09T15:34:00.005+11:00

I can haz 15 inchiz!

And a sleek and lovely thing it is, giving me the greatest pleasure. I'm referring to a brand new 15-inch MacBook Pro – more thrilling to me right now than anything else you might imagine.

Anyone who knows me even slightly knows how I have been whingeing these past 18 months or more about the poor old eMac and the frustrations of being unable to upgrade operating system or browsers. Using the computer online was a constant struggle as the browsers jumped without warning to pages I didn't want to be on, took hours to complete simple operations, and frequently froze and had to be restarted.

What is less well-known is that I do a lot of volunteer work for the local Neighbourhood Centre, a very active organisation in addressing the needs of this community. I'm Secretary of the Neighbourhood Association which operates the Centre, taking minutes of meetings, writing official letters, etc.; I'm facilitator of the very successful, long-running writers' group, WordsFlow; and I edit and proof-read sundry official documents as required – in all of which I've hitherto been considerably hampered by working sometimes on the oldish Windows laptop at the Centre, with which I'm far from comfortable (just can't get the hang of it – so many unfamiliar operations to go through before you get to do what you want) and sometimes on my increasingly dysfunctional (desktop) eMac at home.

Further, this did not bode well for the course I'm scheduled to run at a nearby Community College in a few weeks, on "Brilliant Blogging" for the non-geeky. I was going to have to use yet another oldish Windows machine. Not a good look, for the tutor to be fumbling around incompetently!

All that is past.

As most of those who know me also know, I have been unashamedly begging for donations to help me get a new machine, as well as stashing away any extra I managed to earn by my own efforts. People who love me have been looking out for likely second-hand Macs for me, "previous generation" capable of being upgraded; and a Mac engineer I know was ready to vet anything they found ... but meanwhile I still had to amass the funds. The car reggo came due and I needed to dip into the amount I myself had contributed to the savings. Wouldn't touch other people's donations, given in good faith for the specific purpose, but dipping into the rest made a big hole in the fund.

It was all getting a mite disheartening. So in a recent casting of circle and talking to the Archangels, I thought of asking for something for me, namely that I get "the right computer for my needs" and that I get it before starting the blogging course – and that my dear, deserving Spouse should soon get one too. His own desktop computer, a nice little iMac that replaced an ancient laptop which died, is beginning to falter for the same reasons as mine: the software cannot be upgraded. I was clear that all this would take a miracle, but I also have experience that they can and do happen. The very next day, the Neighbourhood Centre Manager, out of the blue, asked me what exactly I wanted in the way of a laptop.

The Centre has an amount for special purchases, tied up in such a way that it isn't available to go into general running costs. She thought part of it could be used for a new laptop, and that as I'm the person who, almost exclusively, used the old one, it had better meet my needs. Such a large sum needed authorisation by two members of the Finance Committee. Fortunately they too could see that the Centre would benefit from the increase in my efficiency.

I said I would like a 13-inch MacBook Pro. After having a look at them, she said, "They're VERY tiny" and suggested that the 15-inch model would be more efficient, and that it would be good to get one of the just-released aluminium ones which would be stronger than the polycarbon. We were able to source one of those. This was a piece of luck; most suppliers around here are still selling off the polycarbon models before getting the aluminium ones in stock. We'd have had to decide whether to wait some weeks or settle for less than what we wanted, except that we found one shop where a customer had ordered in a 15-inch aluminium one, customised to a faster read speed than usual, and then decided not to take it after all.

So off we went and got it! With three years of Apple Care into the bargain. I feel very valued.

The Neighbourhood Centre owns it and I am the custodian user. (The fact that it's not exactly mine –only to all intents and purposes – means that I'll be taking VERY good care of it.) I'm an enthusiastic supporter of the Centre, not planning to sever relations until I'm really decrepit – which of course will be never. If some unforeseen reason to leave should arise, I guess I'd have to try and buy "my" computer from them, but will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Oh the joy of being able to operate smoothly at last! This is in fact the very first brand new computer I have ever had to work with. I'm getting used to it, and the Centre Manger was quite right about the 15 inches. Sometimes bigger is better, lol.

Bonus – the computer fund can now go towards a "previous generation" laptop for the beloved Spouse.

Disorder

2009-10-28T10:19:00.002+11:00

The discovery / realisation of severe mental disorder in a close relative.

I'm delicate – perhaps ridiculously – about posting on the subject here, yet want to put links to MySpace blogs on the matter. The outdated browser, all I can put on this old computer, is now so jumpy that I can't stay on a MySpace page long enough to copy the url!

For those who are interested enough to go to the trouble, the link in my previous post will get you there. Then you need to click on the link at the bottom of that to the next post, and then the next and the next. They are "Professional Opinion", 22 October; "It Gets Worse", 26 October; and "Views", 27 October.

For material on the disorder itself, this is the best I've found, and leaves me in no doubt of the diagnosis. There's a lot of reading, all spot-on. I found the "Now We Are Six" link particularly illuminating.

No More Fatted Calf

2009-10-21T13:07:00.000+11:00

Those who recall the traumas of the last visit home of my Youngest (the son formerly known as The Prodigal) may be interested in the final chapter.

Climate Change

2009-10-15T02:36:00.003+11:00

Is it real or isn’t it?

We are certainly seeing a lot of extreme weather all over the world in recent years, and it does seem to be getting worse. Tsunamis, dust storms, floods, earthquakes, tropical cyclones, droughts….

But hang on – hasn’t the earth always experienced these conditions? There have been some huge climatic changes in the past. It wasn’t human polluters who caused the Ice Age, for instance. There’s a theory that our earliest agrarian ancestors may actually have helped delay the onset of another ice age a few thousand years ago. Read all about it in Wikipedia.

Um, hang on again. If that is so, it does make sense to think we may have gone too far in that direction by now. It’s not all bad: we didn’t really want another ice age, did we? Maybe the planet needs that balance, but it wouldn’t be very good for us human beings. On the other hand, we don’t really want to be inundated by rising seas either. The inhabitants of small Pacific islands particularly don’t want to be!

But is it all a myth? I have a friend who believes that it is a lie. He says 1998 was the hottest year on record, so clearly the earth has been cooling down, not warming up, in the last decade. (I must say, in terms of planetary time, that doesn’t seem very long actually.) He bases his opinion on this story. Not actually conclusive as far as I can see.

He also thinks it’s a ploy to institute “a global tax (Cap and Trade) to pay for a New World Order, or One World Government whichever the turnout if we allow it to happen.” He’s by no means alone in that view!

Another friend counters:

Here's a condensed version of an article just published. No politics. Just thought it was interesting.

Global Warming Could Cool N. America
Kate Ravilious, National Geographic
September 16, 2009 06:16 AM

Global warming could actually chill down North America within just a few decades, according to a new study that says a sudden cooling event gripped the region about 8,300 years ago. Analysis of ancient moss from Newfoundland, Canada, links an injection of freshwater from a burst glacial lake to a rapid drop in air temperatures by a few degrees Celsius along North America's East Coast.
This event created a colder year-round climate with a much shorter growing season for about 150 years, from northern Canada to what is now Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The results suggest that North America's climate is highly sensitive to meltwater flowing into the ocean, said lead study author Tim Daley of Swansea University in the U.K. The work also means that history could repeat itself: Currently Greenland's ice sheet is melting at a rapid clip, releasing freshwater into the North Atlantic.
Article continues

And where do I stand? I think climate change is real, that we have contributed to it, and we’d better find a solution very, very soon. The earth will survive all right; it’s likely we won’t. That’s why I’m participating in Blog Action Day. Anything that might conceivably help….

Praising Bad Poets

2009-10-10T23:31:00.005+11:00

Well, I don't, but many do – particularly online. On MySpace a man who would have trouble getting a job writing greeting-card verses is fawned over by dozens of online friends who make gushing comments about every one of his sentimental effusions with their poor spelling, atrocious rhymes and pathetic attempts at metre. And so he believes himself to be an excellent poet, and gives advice to others on ways to improve their work.

On facebook is a very nice, intelligent woman who has befriended me. She tagged me to read one of her poems. I refrained from comment. What could I have said? She's not like the man at MySpace. It's free verse, and she can spell. But if I had said anything, it might have been, "What a lot of words you know." (Meaning, "You've chucked every one of them in here.") And she's bright; she'd have got it immediately, and probably been offended.

In truth, I nearly jumped right in on first reading to congratulate her on being so funny. I thought it was hilarious on purpose, and brilliantly so. Then I read others' comments, and here were all these GOOD poets praising her wonderful, incisive language, her taut imagery, and so forth. They were serious. If she was having a joke with them, she was keeping awfully quiet about it. I re-read the piece and realised she probably didn't mean to be funny. Oh dear.

I think I should shout out, "The Emperor's got no clothes!" But I'm not as free or as game or as clear as that little boy. I am like the courtiers and the populace. Everyone else is saying how beautiful the new clothes are, and so I'm afraid to open my mouth for fear of looking like a fool. Besides, I like her as a person and I really don't want to upset her. So I say nothing, and hope she doesn't notice.

Her poetry is image piled on image with little in the way of context or connection. Well, OK, that's perhaps a valid way of making poems. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me – and maybe that's just me being dumb. But here's the clincher: say it aloud, it sounds horrible! There's no music at all; there's hideous dissonance, but not even intentional dissonance which can be interesting – it's just a complete lack of attention to that aspect of poetry. Ugh!

30 Poems in 30 Days

2009-10-03T13:10:00.003+10:00

Some good, some funny, some so bad you can feel superior ...

Here, at "The Passionate Crone".

Reflecting on the Dust Storm

2009-09-25T10:05:00.000+10:00

Along with the notion that we may expect more such events, I'm left with this sobering thought:

a sky full of dust
thickening in the nostrils
and nowhere to run

(Reposted from Haiku on Friday at MySpace)

Dust Storm

2009-09-24T15:00:00.005+10:00

The day before yesterday, driving back to the coast from the nearest town, I did my usual thing of gazing at a panorama of ocean a moment at the crest of one hill before dipping down into our village. This time, it was disappointing: the water dull, and a strange haze in the air.

Next day (Wednesday 23rd) I went to my Tai Chi class at 9am. Nothing much to notice then. I had my chiropractic appointment at 11.15, and as I walked there I noticed that the fine day seemed to be getting overcast. When I left, the chiropractor and his receptionist both came to the door and looked out at the thick yellowish haze now coming over the hills. It had an eerie quiet to it. "Ominous," they agreed. We couldn't figure out what it was. I thought there might be a bushfire somewhere – and yet it wasn't smoke we were seeing.

I went home, turned on the local news, missed most of it but got something about motorists needing to be careful of "the dust from Newcastle" so I Googled that. I found out there had been a huge dust storm way off in the outback desert, exacerbated by gale force winds which blew it eastwards, and by some bush fires along its path. It had blacked out the whole of Broken Hill the previous night, and then moved on to cloak Sydney and Newcastle in an eerie orange-red glow by Wednesday morning.

By 12.30 in the afternoon it was well and truly here - not red as in Sydney but a nasty pale yellow that didn't look healthy. And it was not healthy, of course. In Sydney asthmatics and others ended up in hospital. We got off fairly lightly here by comparison with other places, but we could certainly smell it and knew we were breathing it in somewhat. The day got darker and darker.

Soon the whole sky was blanketed from underneath, and the day and evening became quite cold – strange for this time of year in this part of the country – presumably because of the sun being blocked off. When night came it seemed much darker than usual.

The satellite weather picture on the evening news showed a massive cloud that moved across from South Australia and central Australia to the east coast, stretching from south of Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (the most northeastern point of the country) and as wide as half the State. They said it probably was not an effect of climate change, but one wonders. They also said it was by far the worst dust storm in our recorded history. Here's a NASA view of it from space.

I had no trouble finding a topic for yesterday's 30 Poems in 30 Days prompt: "Write a poem in which a similar or identical phrase is repeated three or more times throughout the poem."

Dark Sky in Daylight

Once upon a time
this was a lush continent
but that was long ago.
Now we have drought.

Our dry inland “outback”
dry like this for centuries
became that way long ago.
Now we have desert.

Today there’s a haze
thickening the whole eastern sky.
Wind and fire outback yesterday,
now we have dust.

We have it here
far from the red centre,
blown all that way yesterday.
Now we have darkness.

23/9/09

Amazing, on waking this morning, to find blue, sunny skies and no trace of the dust to be seen. Even now, though, well into the afternoon, I only have to sniff a bit and I can still smell it. It prompted a tanka (a form I'm playing with a lot lately in an attempt to learn it).

A fresh Spring morning
yesterday’s choking dust cloud
vanished from this coast –
to infiltrate the ocean
or arrive in New Zealand?

24/9/09

Photos here (Sydney).

Resigning from Extra Motherhood

2009-09-19T11:01:00.008+10:00

“You’re such a mum,” says my friend Pat affectionately – and inside myself I go, “Oh no, not again!” But it’s not too bad; she doesn’t actually want to claim me for herself in that capacity as so many others do, she’s just commenting on how I come across.

It’s a mystery to me. I have friends of all ages and don’t feel older in my consciousness than any except the really young, and not even all of them. Further, I have never experienced myself as particularly maternal, even when I actually had children – though I did my best of course, as one does. I certainly wasn’t the stereotype, the happily domesticated, perfectly efficient Mum of the early sitcoms (much to my youngest’s continuing reproach). I remember saying, when the kids had all left the nest (really the nest left them, but that’s another story) and my cat and the last of the family dogs had died, “I think I’ve finally learned how to do Mother, just at the point when it’s over.” (For those who will rush to tell me it’s never over, I’m speaking here of practical, day-to-day mothering.)

Not that I wanted it not to be over. I was glad I’d got through it somehow without major disasters, and I was good and ready for the children’s father and me to be just a couple again – at last! Then we found out that we no longer had much in common apart from parenting, and when that was gone … but that too is another story.

Then some of my younger friends started claiming me as their “adopted” Mums (i.e. one Mum, me; various independent-of-each-other adoptees). It never sat easily with me – I just thought we were close friends – but it always seemed meant as such a compliment, even an honour, that I accepted the silly label with whatever semblance of good grace I could manage – and the attendant feeling of some undefined kind of obligation, too. How churlish would it be to refuse? Well from now on that’s what I’m going to do. Next time someone says, “You know, I’ve decided you’re my surrogate Mum,” or, “You’re just like another mother to me,” I’m going to say, swiftly and loudly, and if necessary rudely, “Oh no I’m not!”

I’ve started to notice that these can be dangerous projections. Did I mention that I’m not maternal? Sooner or later I’m bound to disappoint. I don’t do the mother thing well … though perhaps that wouldn’t matter anyway, given that projection is involved. Even when the person consciously sees me in that role, I think there’s still a lot of unconscious stuff comes with it. After all, who wants an extra mother except someone who feels they’ve missed out on the real thing? The ones who see me that way aren’t making up for a deceased mother; no, they’re substituting fantasy me for a real one who was/is unsatisfactory. But sooner or later they reach their delayed adolescence, and then it’s time to break free, grow up and become themselves, delivering a few hard kicks to Mother-Figure in the process. After all, at that point, who would want a mother figure being privy to the confidential details of their lives? (That’s what friends are for. So, by virtue of being mother, I cease to be friend.) I never trained as a psychotherapist, to expect or deal with such developments, let alone maintain objective, professional distance from someone I regard as a pal, and I’m just not up for it any more.

I’m perfectly happy for my sons and foster-sons to call me Mum, and to sign myself that way in emails and birthday cards to them. Sometimes nowadays they call me by my name (as one of the “fosters” always did) and that’s OK too. And of course there is a special bond, a special history.

I didn’t meet my stepchildren until they were already grown up. Sensibly they’ve never regarded me as an extra parent, but more as a friend. I have a nice relationship with my stepdaughter, and she sometimes turns to me for advice, but she doesn’t want me to be her Mum; she’s got one.

I’m perfectly happy when my excellent god-daughters address me, half-jokingly, as “god-mum”. We’re all quite clear on the nature of the relationship and it’s nothing like mother-daughter. It’s somewhat like being a favourite aunt. (I am that too, to a beloved niece.) Mostly they call me by my name, and I treat them as the adults they now are.

And I’m perfectly happy to be “Nana” to my grandchildren. They’re “steps” too, but that makes no difference to them – I’ve always been around. So I AM an extra grandmother, but in an official way. It’s a real relationship: I’m married to their grandfather.

All these relationships, you see, are real and defined. They are legitimate, they have either legal or socially recognised status. There’s a framework. This makes for ease and clarity. Even the mentoring I do for some people is recognised by all parties as exactly what it is.

For the rest – sorry, I did my parenting decades ago. There were lots of bits of it I enjoyed and I certainly don’t un-wish it, but it was enough. I don’t want or need any grown-up infants now.

(Disclaimer: None of the above applies to my friend Letitia, whose idea of surrogate daughterhood is not to want things from me but to seek to do things for me!)

Well, look at us!

2009-09-08T12:56:00.004+10:00

Andrew and me, taken August 7 2009

For everyone who may be wondering

what the heck we look like nowadays.

Innovative new online mag

2009-09-07T09:34:00.003+10:00

The Group is an exciting new concept in online publishing. Curated by a roster of some of Australia's best and boldest writers, each edition will bring you quality new work from Australia and abroad. Foundation members include John Birmingham, James Bradley, Larry Buttrose, Billy Marshall Stoneking and Mark Mordue, with more to be announced soon. Membership is free and open to all, on Facebook.

GROUP 2 magazine is now online, at:

http://groupmag.blogspot.com/2009/08/group-2_26.html

Much to my joy and pride, I'm included in this issue!

You can read the first edition GROUP 1 at:

http://groupmag.blogspot.com/2009/06/group-1.html

My Cats

2009-08-30T13:47:00.005+10:00

This is my current userpic on some social networking sites, where it has made an impression. (I think it looks even better here, looming large.) As I was just telling a friend, I'm proud of it, having cropped it from a bigger photo I took. I'm not a hot-shot photographer, nor very geeky, so I think I did well.

It is of my cat Freya, who is not actually black - though her brother Levi is. We acquired them when they were seven months old, from a friend who had to leave a violent relationship hurriedly, and couldn't keep them. They are now 11 years old! These photos are recent. Freya is immediately below, Levi next. She is not really so dark as this, even, but I don't know how to fix the colour.

The shot below is true to her actual colour, though not such a good composition, lol. And below that you see where I got my userpic. (We think the chairs are ours; they have a different opinion.)

Self-Parody

2009-08-25T00:58:00.004+10:00

A friend has been playing a game of self-parody. (Less likely to give offence, he thinks, than if people parodied each other. He’s probably right.) Having done a wonderful job of catching his own style, he invited others to try it too. Daunting, but of course I couldn’t resist! Here’s my self-parody blog post. Do you think I succeeded? Anyone else game to try?

Sunday market day
I manage so well alone
feel self-reliant
and meet wonderful people
my goodness always so blessed

The day started cool (well, for these parts, that is – but it could be a lot worse, I could be in Melbourne, LOL [Actually I was of course in Melbourne for quite a long time in one of my – ahem! – previous lives … or in fact two of them, with a gap in between when I went to the country … but I digress….].).

Yes, well, as I was saying, the day pretty soon got much warmer, and I was excessively delighted to be in the pavilion! (Dungeon that it is in winter, but one can always rug up – in this neck of the woods, as it happens, we think it’s freezing if we have to wear one jacket – but still, as soon as it hots up around here, the pavilion is the place to be.)

A darling little girl came by with her Mum, and as soon as she caught sight of me in my bright, welcoming outfit and vibrant purple hair, she broke into huge shrieks of laughter, pointed at me and nudged her Mum, who bent down for the child to say something in her ear. She hastily shushed the little girl, but I saw a hint of a smile twitching her lips too as she glanced over at me.

“It’s perfectly all right,” I called to her across the space between us. “She’s drawn to my aura. It happens all the time with these dear little ones.” The mother merely threw a somewhat startled look over her shoulder and bustled the child away.

*Sigh.* So often the parents just don’t – in fact can’t – understand the very special children who are manifesting upon the planet these days. These kids are indeed incredibly drawn to me, and tend to be overcome by spontaneous joy whenever they encounter my energy field! Btw I have no explanation for this; it is simply what is so.

And so it was yet another magickal and auspicious and wonderful day, and once again I was able to give my clients absolutely what they wanted and needed (deep-down, that is, even though in some cases their consciousnesses may not always have allowed them that awareness as yet. Luckily I have learned to be supremely confident of my insights on these occasions, being, as I am, the recipient of so many miraculous gifts)!

“How blessed I am,” I thought to myself for the umpteenth time, as I packed up my car later in the rapidly increasing heat. “Indeed!” I agreed with myself as I steered with gratifying efficiency out of the somewhat awkward parking space that my personal angels had found for me earlier, and drove home over Clothiers Creek Road’s steep, winding hill. Oooh! that steering wheel was HOT! Time to start again with the old towel-over-the-steering-wheel trick when parked for any length of time!

Being very much otherwise occupied tomorrow, I’ll leave you with a promise to post another poem soon from my old mate Thom, who always gives me permission to share his work. We've known and revered each other since the days when I was a famous poet in Melbourne in the eighties, and also when I was very highly acclaimed in Austin, Texas during April of 2006. (Don’t worry if by some chance you've never heard of me; perhaps you’re too young (or too old, roflmao) but basically it’s really entirely my own fault for being too modest in recent years to push myself forward, unlike some others of my more widely-recognised colleagues from that thrilling heyday of the Poets Union (of which btw I was a co-founder back in the day.).)

Oh and, if you would like to read my poetry, you can find many of my poems at my “Lecherous Crone” blog, my “Weekend Limericks” blog, my primary MySpace profile, and of course on Twitter, where I am massively enjoying trying my hand at “tweetpoems” of 140 characters or less, which are frequently re-tweeted by my followers as a way of expressing their admiration. (In my case, of course, it‘s a particularly challenging exercise because I always put a hash tag and the word “poetry” after each tweetpoem so as not to confuse any non-poetic members of the public who may come across them, thereby further reducing the number of characters available.) I am also published in the jocularly titled anthology Wankers Anonymous (Google it!) and will be featured in the first issue of the forthcoming ezine Poetasters Online, ed. by Datura Flight.

on this darkest of nights

2009-08-19T09:22:00.002+10:00

By Thom Moon 10
(posted with permission)

i cannot see my hand in front of me

the bush outside my borrowed window is black and deep and dark

absolutely no perspective is gained around me

unless and until i look-UP!

fierce stars and planets in a foreign constellation

beam brightness and illumination

as it is by night-so too by day

your candescence shows me the way

among the rising,falling,spinning frozen stars

to navigate a pathway by the ways of Light

it is a long road to morning

the darkest hour is not before the dawning

it is now,when things seem blackest

we go within -or choose to look without

hope of consolation or maps

There will always be Light above us

and light within-even if obscured

by a context of darkness

Light and change are assured..

TRUST IN CONNECTION EVER/MORE August 19,2009

Market Sunday

2009-08-19T01:23:00.007+10:00

It’s that lovely, economical period of the year when we don’t need either the heater or the cooler on. Last Sunday was warm and sunny and gorgeous; it was surprising that some of the market stallholders didn’t turn up. Maybe there was a festival or something somewhere, that the rest of us hadn’t heard about. Luckily a lot of the public had not heard of any such thing either, and came to our market.

There were drummers too, a new troupe in this region, dressed in outlandish, glamorous costumes, all different, the predominant colour bright red. The market organiser had warned me beforehand, knowing that loud noise nearby can interfere with my psychic readings. “They’ll be walking around,” she said. “Not staying in one place.” I bumped into one of them early, doing my rounds before the customers started arriving. It was an old mate I hadn’t seen in some time. She took in my purple-red hair and vibrant red and purple shirt and told me I should be in their troupe!

I loved doing the markets with Andrew all those years – 14 or so. It was companionable and fun, and he did wonderful things for people with his Reiki treatments and Indian Head Massage. I also love doing them on my own now that he’s retired. I’ve enjoyed discovering that I can be capable and self-reliant; now I relish the ongoing experience of that. The gazebo, given to us some years ago by our good friend the Water Filter Man when he got himself a newer one, is very easy to put up and take down. I’ve got it down to a fine art by now and can do it alone and unaided – even though the other stallholders would help if needed.

Newest GodDaughter came to see me! She will be six months old next week, so was conveyed by her parents – her radiant, besotted parents. They handed her to me and settled in for a chat, as I had no customers just then. “Oh look,” they said, “She likes you.” They told me she had just started “getting funny” with anyone but them, but she seemed fine with me. I reflected that I’ve known and held her since a few days after her birth, but they said she even reacts that way with her grandmother. I felt smug. She sucked gently on my shirt and twiddled my sacred pendant. I noticed that she is getting prettier all the time.

“Could she pick a card?” said her mother. I turned her to face the table and drew the cards closer. She selected two which clearly described each of her parents. I encouraged her to try for one more, to comment on herself. She got 4 of Cups, sometimes known as the card of “Divine Discontent”. I explained that it depicts someone who’s got lots of goodies but wants more. Her father said, with a laugh, “She’s been a bit like that lately.”

The drummers started up. They stood in an empty space a few stalls down from me and bashed their instruments fast and loud while a bit of a crowd gathered. Then they started marching and dancing towards us, at the beginning of their “walk around”, rat-tatting all the time. It was wonderful – and it was thunderous. “I think I’ll just take her away a while,” said Newest GodDaughter’s father with some concern. He scooped her up and set off for the far side of the market.

When he returned a little later, he stood holding her as he chatted to me. She suddenly caught sight of me, her eyes focused in and she beamed. Then, still holding my gaze, she laughed and laughed with sheer delight. I’ve never felt so flattered.

Newest GodDaughter at four and a half months, with her Radiant Mum

TURTLE ISLAND(a story forgotten..

2009-08-18T12:40:00.009+10:00

By Thom Moon 10
(Posted with permission ... just because I like it.)

She had put the crab pots out and invoked turtle wisdom

(slow,deep,sustaining-with our whole world upon its shell)

Went out to pick up the crab pots

First one empty-second one full of crabs

Third one -something stuck inside

Now the water was clear so she could see down

at a turtle stuck for the past 12 hours

She had to cut him out-he was dead to our world

But she began massaging him ,flipper by flipper

until involuntary movements of his beaked head

assured her that some life was evident

She had done this for hours-praying,meditating,chanting

soothing and caressing until she was able to slip that turtle

back in to the waters(asking a surfboard rider to care for him

As soon as the board rider came close-turtle dived deep and was gone

leaving only this slip of a flipper of a story to share

as evidence that all magick is reversible

What you love is salvageable/beliefs make results real

and we still have a lot to learn from turtles

Like-how did such a huge creation

fit within the tiny entrance to a crab pot trap?

(and how will we ever get out again?

WELCOME TO TURTLE ISLAND TOTEM August 18,2009

Weight Loss Update

2009-08-15T00:16:00.006+10:00

How’s the secret diet?” asks Stepdaughter with a naughty laugh in her voice. I don’t even think, as I reply that I’ve lapsed a bit during this hard winter of lingering colds and low energy. Only afterwards the word registers: “diet”.

People just won’t get it.

IT. IS. NOT. ABOUT. FOOD.

Even the woman I think of as my best friend in these parts snorts testily when I tell her for the umpteenth time that it’s not a diet. “Oh well, whatever you call it then. Eating plan, whatever.” She looks so scornful - despite seeing me scoff the chocolate biscuits - that I give up and refrain from insisting that it isn’t an eating plan either.

We have been so conditioned to believing that weight IS about what you eat. And certainly I have proven that over and over again myself – Lifetime Member of Weight Watchers, successful graduate of Jenny Craig, and so forth. Eating to slim does work … for a while.

Well, why should you believe me? I keep not telling you what we ARE doing. And then I say that we are not sweating off the weight with a harsh exercise régime either.

OK, let me tell you some things I can say. Over the winter Debbie, my massage therapist – who is trained in Swedish, Shiatsu, Reiki, Deep Tissue, Reflexology, Lymphatic Drainage, Advanced Aromatherapy and Cranio-Sacral, and knows how to read a body – thought my thyroid was out of balance. She suggested alkaloid foods. I was worried; if I started a special diet, would it interfere with the credibility of the weight loss program? Would people say afterwards, “Oh she only lost weight because of the thyroid diet?” I said as much to Letitia, the originator of our program. She just gave me a kinda fish-eyed look and said, “When have I ever spoken to you about food? It’s not about that.” So I relaxed and was careful for a little while, and when the doctor had my thyroid function tested it was perfectly in balance. So I stopped worrying about what I was eating.

Then Debbie picked up that my pancreas was a bit out. This was a worry; once before I had been told I had a pre-diabetic condition. I took my blood sugar for a little while, while cutting down on sweets, and requested that my doctor order a blood test. My naturopath and doctor both pronounced that I was not diabetic.

Meanwhile I became concerned about my osteopenia (precursor of osteoporosis) which I know I do have. I found out that the medication prescribed carried its own problems. My chiropractor recommended weight training as the only really efficient way to address the problem. So I started a gentle régime under the guidance of a trainer. I’m afraid I am not very disciplined and it’s been in abeyance a little while, but I do intend to resume.

And I have continued with my Tai Chi classes which I was already doing before going on the weight loss program.

Here is the interesting thing – while I was dieting for my thyroid and pancreas, while I was gung-ho with the weight training, I was not losing weight. I was in my “lapse” from the program and I could tell from my shape and the fit of my clothes that I actually put on a little. Now that I have revived the program, I’m starting to see slimming happening again.

The same happened to us all. It felt like a long, hard winter. Several of the team got sick this winter, sponsorship funding ran out, people at a film conference Letitia attended loved her idea but told her that her approach to the filming could use some changes…. We all either put back a bit of the weight we’d taken off, or stayed the same.

And yet we know the program works. We didn’t lose all the weight we wanted to as fast as we wanted to, but my goodness we did have some dramatic results. And the hiatus has been useful too, making us look deeper at what makes us fat and what makes us fit.

We had a meeting the other day, to hear Letitia unfold her new plans – not for the program, that’s unchanged, but for the way we present it to the world. Exciting stuff! And our enthusiasm is rekindled. We have put our lapses behind us and got back into the swing of it. And guess what, my face is suddenly looking slimmer in the mirror, and I’m doing up my bra on the tightest row of hooks again.

And no, I’m not divulging the details just yet. I don’t care if you think it really MUST be some revolutionary new way of managing food. Mind you, I always have eaten in a fairly healthy way – well, except for the chocolates – but that never stopped me getting fat, and since being on this program I haven’t made any drastic changes to what I eat, when I eat or how much I eat.

I had a lot to lose and I still have more than half of it left, so don’t expect to see me become stick-thin overnight (or at all; I’m not mad on the skin-and-bone look). I don’t know how long it will take. However we now have a digital camera, and almost know how to use it. I intend to post pictures from time to time, of the Incredible Shrinking Woman.

Today I walked into the Neighbourhood Centre and one of the staff – who sees me often – did a double-take and said, “Are you losing weight?” Yeah!

Computer - Developments

2009-08-13T10:15:00.005+10:00

People have been so kind with their good wishes and helpful suggestions! My friend Letitia phoned up and said she had a friend who worked at a computer refurbisher much closer to home than the Sydney mob and could get me one that had just come in, for $550. She put her name on it while waiting for them to strip it down and do it up.

Then she happened to mention this in a phone conversation with her brother - who is a Mac computer engineer. He said, "Why are you getting her that model? She won't be able to upgrade." He suggested that it would be affordable to go for the "previous generation" i.e. not the latest model but the one before that, and to look on eBay. He also said I'd have more luck if I would consider a laptop.

Would I? A laptop is my preference! In my role as Secretary of the Neighbourhood Association, I get to use their laptop to take the minutes. It has Windows. I hate Windows! I can find my way around it, usually with some help from the more experienced, but after using Macs all these years I find Windows operations incredibly indirect, circuitous and time-consuming. It would be heaven to just take my own MacBook laptop along to meetings ... and many other places too.

Letitia is a whizz on eBay. She has put a watch on what I want, to see what they're going for. Around $800 it seems. When I get the money together, she will refer any likely-looking models to her brother to assess.

I have emailed close friends and family members with a shameless begging letter, to see if they'd like to give me an early present for my 70th birthday later this year, by chipping in for my laptop. Meanwhile am doing what I can to amass the funds myself, and have the first $100 set aside.

It's wonderful that what had seemed out of reach has suddenly become possible!

And incidentally, my Tarot student who "saw" that I would get a new machine via people who cared about me, actually thought it would be a couple. Letitia and her brother, perhaps?

Rating My Life

2009-08-11T00:05:00.000+10:00

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.2
Mind:	6.7
Body:	5.9
Spirit:	8.8
Friends/Family:	7.2
Love:	7.3
Finance:	6.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Best Writing Workshop Ever!

2009-08-09T11:49:00.000+10:00

Ecstatic write-up at the WordsFlow blog.

If the house is a mess ...

2009-08-07T10:42:00.003+10:00

My second husband Bill had a great mate, Lindsay, who used to renovate houses. He said that he'd observed over many years that "the more intelligent the woman, the messier her house". My friend Beth and I used to have standing joke ever after: "I'm having a really brainy day today," meaning, "Ignore the mess" or, "Do come in, I've been ever so dumb lately".

Of course, this was in the era when it was still assumed – in most circles – that housework was exclusively the woman's responsibility. Thank goodness THAT isn't the case any more ... is it?