Beautiful Freak

Closing the curtains on 2011

2011-12-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

For what it's worth...

Books I have read and loved this year:
The Tiger's Wife - Téa Obreht
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
Look at Me - Jennifer Egan
Past the Shallows - Favel Parret
Just Kids - Patti Smith
The Cook - Wayne Macauley
(It would appear that women writers have impressed me more than the men this year.)

Books that I liked but didn't love this year:
1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
Needlessly long (and I love a long book). Loved the idea but there was too much unnecessary padding in it for me. If only it had been chopped some more, perhaps then... And I was so looking forward to this one's arrival.
By Nightfall - Michael Cunningham
Almost loved it but not quite.
Bereft - Chris Womersley
Really liked it, almost loved it, but not quite.
The Pale King - David Foster Wallace
Probably unfair to place this here given that it was his unfinished novel, and I also haven't finished reading it (put it down but will go back to it). Some moments were spectacular in this book, so I will pick it up again to finish it.

The above is only from what I can recall off the top of my head at the moment of writing this and so is not a definitive list, but I figure if these come to mind then they must have made some kind of impression on me, as my memory is woeful, and anything still there at the end of the year must have had something to offer me.

My own writing this year:
Made significant progress on the first draft of my novel - but not as much as I would have liked. Things went pear-shaped towards the end of the year with personal issues requiring attention. Had a children's book ignored (ie: rejected) by Penguin. Didn't send too many short stories out this year but of those I did there are 2 on the shortlist for publication in an anthology in the US. Will have to wait for 2012 to see what happens there. Fewer reviews published than other years, and a handful of columns got out there.

For the coming year:
Complete the first draft of this novel and hopefully get the second well underway (I have another idea that's really really tugging at me to get to it). Rework the kids' book (maybe too wordy?) and send it elsewhere. Write more short stories and find homes for many of those languishing at home right now. Utilise my blog and (online) publishing options more.
I am anticipating some time of unemployment in 2012 (April) so hope to be able to redefine it as writing time. Small payout from work may buy me a little time (I'm likening it to a writing grant, which is usually a pitiful amount, of equal proportion to my payout).
Find a new job - hopefully still in the book trade (after 20+ years in the biz the thought of leaving it behind seems wrong).

And that, for me, is 2011, in a nutshell. Now I am off to see a band, listen to music, party with friends in heritage gardens surrounded by art and history, shoot the usual shit with interesting people with arty type proclivities and kiss the arse of 2011 goodbye.
Stay safe and beautiful, and see you in 2012.

x

Late Bloomers

2011-07-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

Two posts in one day: unheard of! But this one is really just to remind me. I read this article back when it appeared in The New Yorker and, well, I found it encouraging, when sometimes encouragement is all that's needed to face the page for another day. Other writers out there might find it useful. Click on the link below... and enjoy.

http://www.gladwell.com/2008/2008_10_20_a_latebloomers.html

Story Within a Story

2011-07-15T05:02:00.001-07:00

I've had a week off work to do nothing but write, and write is pretty much all I've done, and now that I'm nearing the end of my week I can see I've written not nearly enough. Several thousand new words of the larger project (which I'm yet to admit is a novel) have been written this week and it's moving in some interesting directions, while at the same time I fear not enough is happening in the story at all. It is, however, only a first draft and I'm still discovering what kind of story it is that I'm writing. It's messy but has moments. I envisage most of the first draft not making the cut when I rewrite and rewrite and try and turn this into something worth reading. I also started a new short story this week. The opening scene grew out of me trying to describe a dream that I had. Somehow in writing it down I found a fairly distinct voice was telling the story. As I sat with it a while I realised I had another short story I'd written last year that didn't quite work as it was when I wrote it, but felt it could work as a story within a story if I somehow weave it through the story I'm currently writing. The going is slow and messy but so far so good. Much of the original story that wasn't cutting it will be ditched but some of it will stay. I'm experimenting with it at the moment and am preferring it already. And then it ends all too quickly as I head back to work on Monday and try to juggle my hours and continue the pace. Oh, for a patron to fund this malarky.

Door-to-Door

2010-10-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

Crippling migraine led to a day off work last week. The first part of the day teeters between semi-consciousness and extreme pain and nausea. Nice. For more info on migraines check out here: http://sirihustvedt.net/ or here http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/author/siri-hustvedt/ While mine can be relentless and debilitating I would call Siri Hustvedt's spectacularly severe. For me no writing gets done, no reading, and you can kiss your social life goodbye. On this particular day a whole lot of meditating and soaking up the sun's rays helps me begin to feel a little more human. At some point in the afternoon there is a knock at the door. I'm not sure why I answer it but I do. I'm not the full quid. This migraine has addled my faculties to the extreme. Or maybe I open the door because the cat's so damned excited she's climbing the stained glass panel next to the front door. The cat's feeling sociable so I open the door and give her a person. For you, Pandora. Thanks.
This man is from (undisclosed) energy company, although he discloses the company's name to me with a whip-fast tug of his staff card attached to his belt. He holds it up to me just long enough so that I can make out the three lettered acronym that this dreaded company goes by, he removes it quickly enough so that I don't see his name.
'We are your service provider, even though your bills have another company's name on them, we are your providers and I'm here to check that you're paying the right amount on your bills...'
He talks but all I can hear is my head pounding. The movement to the door, the interaction with another human being has brought on another bout of nausea. My stomach is Vesuvius in motion.
'I can't do this right now', I say. 'I'm home from work because I'm sick, and I need to throw up right now, sorry.'
'This won't take long,' he says.
This won't take long!
'No, really, I'm going to vomit, RIGHT NOW.'
'If you just get one of your recent bills we can have a look at what you are currently paying and...'
I should have hurled all over him, but I did the only thing I could do at the time. The polite thing perhaps. I grab the cat, yell, 'I have to go RIGHT NOW', and slam the door in his face mid-sentence, drop the cat and run to the bathroom, dry heaving all the way.
I get that the job would be shitty, that people would tell you to piss off constantly, but when someone tells you they're going to vomit it might be a good idea to just back right off. Next time I won't be so polite.
Granted, I didn't have to open the door but I was not well and the cat seemed so happy to see him.

Pandora & new words

2010-07-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I don't come here that often. What of it? I'm busy writing other stuff. Well, that's my excuse anyway. I have been chipping away at a few things. The 'big piece' has stalled while I've been working on some other pieces. Finished the first draft of a lengthy short story that I've put aside for a little while before redrafting. I'll probably get back to that this week some time. And I just finished the first draft of a kids' picture book. Currently without pictures but I did get the story down. I haven't really looked at writing for kids before (teenagers, maybe but kids, no) but I had a weird dream and when I woke I couldn't help but think it would be a great idea for a kids' book. I couldn't ignore it. Not giving away any of it at the moment but my cat, Pandora (pictured) has found herself a cameo role in it in a few scenes. It was fun to write. There's a little redrafting to do - the end's not quite right - and next I'm off to the library to check out kids' books to get a sense of the types of illustrations etc that might work. I'm no illustrator and I'm not really familiar with the kids' writer/illustrator/publisher relationship so I probably should brush up on my research into that. There's no publisher looking at it at this early point but I do think it would make a fun kids' book if all the elements fall into place. And next I'll be dragging out the 'big piece', and hopefully with the recent break from it I'll be able to come back to it with renewed energy. Cheers and all that.

Writing again

2010-03-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

So work takes over my time and I find myself writing more. If I don't write then my life is just work, home, work. That just can't be. I couldn't stand myself if that was it. And so I'm writing more on trams, in my lunch hour. While out to see a band I sneak out a pen and paper in a dark corner and jot away at the edges of something, I'm not sure what. There's been an interesting burst of creativity of late so I'm moving with it. Don't want to think about it too much, don't want to question it. Have three pieces on the go, and I flit between them - a short and a long fiction piece, and a non-fiction piece. I've no idea what any of them will turn into but I'm happy to move with them and see what they might become. Am on holidays now for two weeks. Two weeks of writing.

Am reading, In-Human by Anna Dusk. A wonderful, poetic and dark werewolf story set in Tassie. It's great to finally see this story in a beautifully bound book, after having seen an earlier draft when studying with Anna at RMIT and knowing the long process she's gone through to get it published. I highly recommend it. Check out her website for more info...
www.annadusk.com

Curiouser and Curiouser

2009-03-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

Hmmm, so much for embracing the blogging world... but I have been writing. I've put the novel I was working on aside. It wasn't happening. I was bored with it and that's not a good sign. I was stuck, yet short story ideas were abundant. But the ever-looming 'novel' was getting in the way of those too. So I gave it an honest appraisal - the novel would have to go. I was trying to force it to life and it was resisting, and it all felt wrong. So the novel's gone, as has the pressure I'd put on myself to write one. It may come out again but not now. As soon as the novel was ditched something lifted and new short story ideas came to life - interesting and exciting. Some will last the distance others won't. And then the nagging tug of an old story that I've never been able to get right. I've never been able to get it right because it's a much bigger story than I initially thought and I've been trying to capture it within the pages of a short story. It wouldn't let me. So now I'm playing with it again, giving it space to unfold. I'm not sure if it's a long short story, a novella, a novel or whatever - I'll let it shape itself. Now that I've got more space to play with the story's coming to life. The voice is stronger. It's an early draft - flawed and messy, but delicious. It began as a dream. One that has haunted me for years. The opening scene is pretty much how I dreamt it, and I awoke with so many questions. Why did they do that? What led to this point? etc etc. I've been curious about this story ever since I woke from the dream several years ago. The only way I'll know the answers is to write the story. So, ever slowly, onward...

Hello from the Girl with the Red Hair at Marios

2008-11-11T17:24:00.000-08:00

Every Thursday at four o’clock you’d walk through the door. You had your favourite table, the one next to the wall covered with posters. You’d always open some hefty volume. Remember? And you’d read for hours. You’d rest your chin on your hand and your dark curls would fall like a curtain across your face, closing out the rest of the world. (I always did like dark curls on a man.) The waiters would top up your glass with an endless supply of steaming caffeine.

And I would wait. I was always waiting.

You’d tap your foot softly to the music playing in the background. Did you know you did that? I would sit at the table at the opposite side of the room, against the wall, with my back to the window to the outside world. I’d write in my diary. Did you ever look up from your book and think, what is she writing about? I would sip my latte and peer at you over the top of the froth and the pages of my diary would fill easily with words. I wondered if I’d ever have the courage to show you the world inside my diary.

And I would wait.

Were you ever curious about me? We were always there at four o’clock, on a Thursday, every Thursday, amidst the rumble of conversations, the clinking of glasses, the crashing of pots and pans, and the bantering of the waiters. Did you ever think, like I did, there must be a reason for us being at the same place at the same time? I wrote about that in my diary. About how certain people come into your life, or pass you in the street, or sit on your tram, and you see them again and again.
Why is that? Are you meant to know that person, do you think? If someone keeps entering your world should you explore the reasons for them being there? Even if it’s just someone who sits on your tram? I always had too many questions. That’s why I’d write in my diary.
Someone told me it’s because human beings are creatures of habit. It’s because we’re carving the same pathways each day out of the routines of our lives. We’re bound to see the same people if our days repeat themselves. I decided to test this theory. One Thursday I didn’t go to Marios, even though it meant I wouldn’t see you. I caught the Johnston street bus to the other side of town. You got on at the next bus stop. Was it coincidence that we both changed our routines and our pathways still brought us together? I don’t believe in coincidence.

I was always waiting.

I wondered if you ever noticed the world outside your books. Sometimes you would look across the room at me. Your curtain of curls would part and you’d look vague and troubled. A small crease would fall across your brow. Your slender finger would still be inside the pages of your book, keeping your place. The fingers of your other hand would tap a rhythm on the white tablecloth covering your table and you’d be thinking about the words you’d just read. I wondered where your thoughts took you. I wondered where your books took you. You’d be looking at me but I could tell you were somewhere else. I don’t think you even saw me at all.

And I would wait.

Sometimes though, you’d notice me. You’d stare in my direction for too long and I’d see your eyes begin to register. Your thoughts would come back to the room and you’d look slightly confused and disoriented. As though you’d just woken from a dream. You’d look at me vaguely, like I was an old painting you’d just remembered had been hanging on your wall for years. You’d stare as if you’d just noticed it for the first time. And you’d quickly look away. You’d look out the window at the passing Brunswick street milieu and you’d turn your eyes back to your book, remember? I wanted you to look at me as though I was a glossy brochure to some exotic location.

I was always waiting.

I guess I’m a shy person. That’s probably why I’m always writing in my diary. Sitting in a crowded restaurant, alone, writing. Is that why you were always reading your books? I often wondered if there was ever a right time to say hello. If you see someone every week for months, would it seem stupid to suddenly, out of the blue, say hello? Did you ever want to speak to me? Did you ever try to say hello?
Perhaps I’d turned hello into a loaded word. Would one hello change things? Would it lead to other words? Would it mean you’d one day open your world of books to me? Or that I’d open my diary to you?

I was sick of waiting.

I don’t know where it came from. It wasn’t exactly a hello, was it? But it was a smile. A hello smile. At least, that’s how I’d hoped you’d see it. You returned it though, didn’t you? Two nervous smiles at Marios—yours and mine. And we both looked away. I tried to concentrate on the words I was writing in my diary but I couldn’t. I pretended. I think you must’ve too as you didn’t turn as many pages as usual. And did you realise you kept looking over at my table? I’d decided it was almost time to say hello.

And I would wait. I was always waiting.

The day you didn’t show up at Marios, I knew something must’ve been wrong. It wasn’t like you. I’d felt strange all morning; sad for some reason. I thought it was because I’d decided to say hello. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. I thought that maybe after we said hello there’d be nowhere else to go. Perhaps I wouldn’t like the world inside your books. Maybe you wouldn’t like the world inside my diary. And where do you go from there? You can’t turn back once you’ve said hello. Can you? I guess you can but it’s never the same then, is it?
When your chair stayed empty I checked my diary. At first I thought I’d confused my days. But it was Thursday and you weren’t there. Did you catch the bus instead, I wondered? But you didn’t, did you? I thought, perhaps you were trying to avoid my hello. Maybe you’d loaded hello too and it scared you away. But as the weeks went by and you never showed, I began to understand.

I waited too long.

I heard fragments only. It happened suddenly. Such a sad waste. He was so young. The waiters would shake their heads at your empty chair as they spoke about it - your death. I don’t know how you died. I didn’t even know your name. Sometimes I can feel you here with me at Marios. I look across the room, over the sea of white tabletops and curved wooden chairs, and I can see us sitting together at your favourite table, sipping our lattes and sharing our worlds. I tap my fingers on the tabletop to the background music, I inhale the steam of caffeine rising from my glass, I breathe in the cacophony of rich aromas wafting over from the kitchen and I see your face staring across the table at me; smiling, laughing. I can see us as we might have been if I’d said hello.

And I would wait. I was always waiting. This time I waited too long
to say hello.
So,
for what it’s worth,
Hello from the girl with the red hair at Marios.

#

This was an equal winner of the OzOpera Short Story Award where four stories were selected to represent four popular Melbourne streets. The stories were then adapted to opera and performed by OzOpera. My story was combined with another winner and became the opera, Way Dead Cool. Very little of the original story appeared in the final opera (well, it has the same vibe, was about all I could say on the night of seeing the opera), but it was fun to be selected and see where they went with it. I figure the story can have another life here.

Vali Myers

2008-03-10T22:57:00.000-07:00

‘I’m good in bed. I learn from my animals.’ Vali Myers explains her affinity with animals at her Melbourne studio a few days before flying out to Italy. Her pink-walled studio is filled with well -wishers hoping to share some time, conversation and a drink or two with her before she leaves. No one knows when she’ll be returning, least of all Vali.’
‘I never know how long I’ll be anywhere, Love,” she says. ‘I don’t plan anything.’
Vali Myers, a self-taught artist, was born in Sydney in 1930 and became a leading dancer in the Melbourne Modern Ballet Company before heading to the bohemian Left Bank in Paris where she lived as a dancer and artist. By twenty-three she’d acquainted herself heavily with drugs and planned to commit suicide but instead met and married an Austrian and moved to the hills of Positano in Italy where she still works on all of her paintings.
‘When I work I don’t see no one, Love. Just my animals. There’s over one hundred of them now. Not just dogs. Once a year I go out to the festival and dance with the gypsies. The rest of the time I just work.’
Vali is leaving her temporary home of Melbourne and is heading back to Positano to be with her animals and to work. There is a piece that has been building within her and it’s time to put it to paper.
‘It comes from the spirit. There’s been something building for a long time. It’s from deep under the sea, right under. I’m drawn to the water, it’s in a lot of my pictures.’
Vali calls her painstakingly rendered pen and ink pictures ‘spirit drawings’. They cover the walls of her studio. Most are self-portraits of some form and each is replete with intricate flowing lines and swirls, sensual curves and undulating hills and waves.
Vali works mainly with goose-feather in carefully diluted black Chinese ink, burnt Sienna and Sepia, sometimes using gold leaf for backgrounds. She works by night in a cage, taking up to a year or more to complete one picture.
Vali survives on money made from sales of her work, which she exhibits internationally. She has attracted many high profile fans including Marianne Faithful, Patti Smith and Deborah Harry and is famously quoted as having once asked a young Mick Jagger at her studio, ‘And what do you do, Love?’
A young dreadlocked musician visiting Vali’s studio today offers to come back and play her a song and talks to her about the pain of creating art, whether it be writing a song or painting.
‘Yeah, art is painful,’ Vali agrees. ‘It’s from the spirit. It builds.’
‘People, they come in and look at the pictures and cry. I had a beautiful lady in the other day who’d recently lost a baby and she was in tears looking at my work. She said to me, there must have been a lot of pain in my life.’
But Vali is exuberant today despite having just returned from a lawyer’s office where she has been finalising her Last Will and Testament. She is celebrating, drinking alcohol from a china cup and dancing in bare feet to gypsy music playing through the studio. She tosses her dyed orange-red hair, grips her skirts and swirls them around her as she skips and dances. There is a huge smile on her tattooed face.
‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ she asks.
‘I’ll leave my art to the women of Victoria... a gift to the women here. They’re the most beautiful in the world. The right people will end up with my work. It’ll only go to honest people.’
Vali’s work, with its curves and undulations, has a strong almost primal, feminine energy.
‘Women, they’re beautiful, Love. They’re the spirit and animal. Anima is female, is spirit, is animal.’
The ceiling of her hot-pink studio is covered in large painted flowers; the pink, womb-like walls are covered with Vali’s work and pictures of her friends and animals, including Foxy, her fox who has been immortalised in her art and in the tattoos on her body. Her eyes water as she talks of her bond with Foxy who died several years ago.
‘We understood each other, we always knew what the other was thinking.’
Apart from the dreadlocked musician, every other visitor to the studio today is female. Vali has a strong maternal presence.
‘Look there’s Mama,’ she says proudly as she flicks through a magazine article that has just come out in New York. It’s entitled View from the Left Bank and is filled with black and white photos, which also appear in the now out of print book by the same name, taken in the 1950’s by Dutch photographer Ed Van Der Elsken. Vali is pointing to a picture of herself, minus tattoos, dancing.
Vali is interested in everyone who wanders into the studio. She is tactile, hugs all of her visitors, holds hands with everyone in turn and penetrates with her kohl-rimmed blue eyes.
‘Where do you come from? What’s your background? You look like a creature, Love,’ she observes with her artist’s eye.
‘My work doesn’t attract awful people. People won’t rip me off. They’ll die the next day if they try,’ she laughs. ‘I’m a lioness. I don’t take shit, Love. I’m wild if I’m cornered. I’m a killer.’ She flicks her red mane, flares her nostrils and with her animal-like tattooed face she is a convincing lioness.
Keeping track of Vali Myers’ tangential conversations is like trying to capture a free spirit with a butterfly net.
‘It’s so important to always be a free spirit,’ she says. ‘People forget that and get all screwed up.’
Her conversation jumps from one topic to the next. In one breath she speaks of love.
‘I’ve never been in love. Always let the men fall in love with you,’ she says. Next, she is talking about the treatment of the elderly.
‘It’s terrible what happens to old people in Australia. They send them off to old people’s homes and fill them with drugs. And the old men, who can’t have sex, they give ‘em a drug. People need to be animals, Love, not take pills. They tell you to get check-ups and everything. What’s that? That’s shit, Love. That’s what makes you old.’
So Vali is planning to be with her animals again, to continue being a free spirit and work on a new painting. The energy of her studio is infectious. The dreadlocked boy and his girlfriend canoodle.
‘No sex in here!’ Vali jokes. She wants to get personal and talk focuses on sex.
‘African men are beautiful, so smooth, but the best men in bed are the mean fuckers, know what I’m saying? Bastards are always the best in bed.’
She turns to the young couple and asks the girl, ‘Have you made love with him yet? Is he good in bed?’
At this point the only male in the room has his coat on and is making a dash for the door, dragging his girlfriend by the hand.
Vali laughs, ‘We’re not better than men. They’re just different to us. Not stupid, no, just different. Same as animals.’
#
Vali Myers’ studio is situated at Studio 2, Level 7, 37 Swanston street, Melbourne and will remain open to the public while she’s in Italy.
#
I’m not exactly sure when this was written. Around 2001 sometime, I think. I’d first encountered Vali in my 20’s while sharing a house in East St Kilda. My housemate and friend, Yolande Robertson played me a copy of Tightrope Dancer, the wonderful documentary by Australian film-maker Ruth Cullen, and showed me a now rare book she had of Vali’s art. While I loved her art I think I was even more fascinated with Vali herself.
I first met her at an exhibition she had in South Melbourne. I only spoke to her briefly, as there were plenty of people wanting her attention, but she invited me to come back and visit again, which I didn’t manage to do.
Some years later she had an exhibition opening at Roar Gallery in Fitzroy. I recall a gypsy band and alcohol, and Vali surrounded by people.
It wasn’t until Vali opened her studio in Swanston St that I met her again. While doing a non-fiction class nearby, I was asked who I’d like to write a profile on. I said Vali Myers. My tutor, at the time, Barry Watts, was a fan of Vali’s and sent me out of class immediately to set up the interview. With Vali, there was no setting up. It was now or never, so without any recording equipment and quite spontaneously I ‘interviewed’ Vali then rushed to the nearest café to write down everything I remembered, as best I could. This piece was what I came up with.
While I can’t claim to have known Vali well, I did meet her again on several occasions through a mutual friend (the wonderful writer) Julia Inglis. I recall drinking raki out of dainty tea-cups, conversation, hip-flasks in cinemas, gypsy music, and Vali telling me I reminded her of a transvestite, in particular (pre-op transsexual, to be correct), Candy Darling (I took it as a compliment).
Vali’s studio remained open for quite some time after she died, but closed due to lack of funds. Hopefully we’ll still see exhibitions of her work over the years. She was a unique and inspiring woman and artist. An Australian worthy of recognition.

Murder of Crows

2008-03-10T22:38:00.001-07:00

Harbingers of death, that’s how they see us. Our black forms cut silhouettes of beauty into the backdrop of the sky and all humans see are dark omens - fear. Perhaps if they took time to understand us, they would appreciate the magic that exists in life. And in death.
‘Git…go on, git lost.’ She whips at us with her scarves, slicing the air with a dash of colour and the odour of sandalwood. We soar to a safe distance above yet stay close enough to observe every move she makes. ‘He’s mine, I tell ya…git!’ And she runs through the dense forest.
‘Yours Angeline? You can’t own him,’ we answer. But all she hears are our loud caws. She’ll never understand us. For twenty years we have lived in this forest, thrown together by our deep love for one man; Pedro. She tolerates us, his two familiars, because she has no choice. And we stay beside her because she is our link to Pedro, and we are bound to him by something most humans will never understand. Our bonds go deeper than love or blood - ours are the magical bonds of souls entwined. For eternity.
Lightning crashes, it’s almost time. She speeds up, running as fast as her hefty frame will allow. Her podgy feet leave behind prints of such depth we can see clearly the outline of the silver rings she wears on the middle and last toe of each foot. She is swathed in long layers of flowing velvet gowns, all pulled in tightly at the middle, creating the impression of a small waistline where, in reality, there is none. The winds capture her hair in a frenzied dance and she looks every bit the mad Medusa with snakes of red-ochre whipping about her head.
She clutches to her enormous breasts a large, threadbare bag of patch-worked velvet. Her plump tattooed arms grip the bag so tightly to her heart, it’s almost as if it would cease to pump if she moved the bag away.
At the base of a massive ghost gum tree she pauses and begins chanting words we recognise from twenty years ago. Ancient words that Pedro taught her. From her bag she produces the crystal ball and places it onto the trunk of the ghost gum. At the sight of it a knife-like pain twists at our insides. How we have missed him.
Finally, he is to be released. But we don’t trust her. After all, it was she, who in her haste to prove herself a sorceress, trapped Pedro within the inner worlds of the crystal. A syllable missed, a word gone awry, a slip in the energy, and a spell gone so horribly wrong - destinies have changed forever
She has been given one chance to reverse her mistake. The elements are building, the stars and planets are realigning, to recreate the moment of two decades ago. And she has practiced so diligently this one spell.
But when she sleeps, her fears escape. We’ve heard her cry, ‘If I release you, you’ll leave me... Forever.’ When will humans learn they can’t keep birds in cages forever? Or men in crystal balls, for that matter.
‘And what about my art?’ we’ve heard her wail. ‘The magic will be lost forever.’
Each day we’ve watched as she follows voices even we can’t hear, calling her to different parts of the forest to paint. Always, she takes Pedro with her. He captures her painted images inside the crystal and reflects them back to her. With the help of the crystal ball, she can see the unseen worlds around her, normally invisible to human eyes. She paints magic and she thinks it’s Pedro’s doing. She can’t see that he is only reflecting her own beauty back to her.
The storm builds, the elements are ready. ‘Release him…release him,’ we chant from the branches above. She doesn’t hear us. She chants different words this time. Words we don’t recognise. Words drowned by the fury of the storm. Darkness.

****

For how long we have been here, pecking at this crystal, we no longer know. We are two withered crows now, with tattered feathers, and beaks cracked and bloodied, chipping away at a cloudy crystal ball. But not even a scratch has been made in its surface. And inside, two souls are entwined. Lost to us forever.

#

This story appeared in Aurealis #25/26 in 2000. It came second in the Aurealis Short Story Competition of that year, which requested stories that were 1,000 words exactly, ‘not including title’.
The story grew out of a short story exercise I wrote in class. I had no intention of writing fantasy but that’s what came out of the exercise. Some have said the main character with her wild red hair and tattoos reminded them of Vali Myers (see Vali piece), and while I didn’t write it with her in my mind I can see there are some similarities.
This was the first story I submitted and it was accepted and published on first submission,. So, while I don’t think it’s my best story, it holds a place in my heart, and was a pleasure to write, and brought with it my first publication.

Dole Diary

2008-02-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

DAY ONE:
I’m sitting in a grey, windowless room in an office, in a city building, waiting for something to happen. The work-for-the dole project I am obligated to do sounded interesting, creative even. I selected it because the blurb said we’d be making films and writing scripts, but in reality we sit around and wait for something to happen. This, I discover, we do a lot.
The project had been going for several months before I joined – I’m a new recruit –perhaps that’s why I feel out of kilter. I ask them what they’ve been working on and the replies are oblique. Two characters are being developed for a short film, they tell me. From what I can ascertain these characters spend a lot of time screaming abuse at strangers in the street and clocking people over the head with blunt instruments. I’m not sure why. I don’t really get it.
‘Sounds good,’ I say. It’s going to be a long six months.
There is a pile of well-thumbed magazines on the table, which are regularly reached for, to cover up the awkward silences and to hide the fact that we are all sitting around a table, doing nothing. I sift through the magazines. All are dated 1997. What happened in ’97? I wonder, and flick through the glossies.
A DVD is put into the player, then a video. We view The Office then Saturday Night Live. Fun, maybe, but not productive. I itch to write. If I’d wanted to watch videos all day, I could have sat at home and done that. I may be unemployed but I’m (mostly) productive with my time. When not looking for jobs, I’m writing – short stories, scripts, a novel, something – every day, but these things don’t count as work-for-the-dole. So I sit in a room of listless people who read the same magazine articles several times over and wait for something to happen.
Another DVD is put into the player and I reach for a magazine. Nick Cave is on the cover and I dip into his life in ’97. In my mind I try to map out the next chapter of my novel while Not Another Teenage Movie plays.
I clutch onto Nick for dear life, and sanity. It’s just you and me here, I think. I count on Nick to pull me through the day. In fact, I covet that magazine for the entire time I’m trapped within that stuffy, windowless room. Nick reminds me of what a healthy relationship with the muse is like. He reminds me that some can earn a living when in healthy cahoots with the muse: so unlike my dysfunctional relationship with my muse. She’s a bitch, I think. It’s because of her I’m here. It’s because of her I can’t hold down a nine-to-five job.
We break for lunch and when we return the group co-ordinator (or whatever his title is) is playing videos of his industrial goth band from 1997. Ah, so that’s what happened in ’97, I think and things slowly piece together. We are then subjected to videos of his performance-art, also circa ’97, which involve much nudity, fake blood, angry lesbians and screaming. It seems the guy ‘teaching’ us about films was anti-film for years.
‘I hated films,’ he said. ‘Never watched ‘em. I just wanted to vomit and scream for the sake of art.’ Oh, I know how he feels, I think, and absently stroke Nick Cave’s cheek.
When the performance-art video stops the room descends into an awkward silence. Someone reaches for a magazine. Do we actually do anything here? There is some talk of film; vague references are made to cinema’s classics.
‘I hear China Town’s a good film,’ our co-ordinator says. ‘But I haven’t seen it.’
I want to throw something hefty at him and wish I had a copy of Robert McKee’s Story in my bag.
After interminable moments where nothing happens and we all look to one another for something, anything, he suggests we go outside for the afternoon. I was starting to think I was a recipient of some extreme form of Nazi-inspired mental torture in that windowless cell.
We head to the park. Our ‘leader’ has a guitar strapped to his back and I feel a vague sense of unease. No good can come of this, I think as we sit in a circle on the grass and he strums his guitar. The weather is sublime and I shake off the lethargy of the room.
‘Let’s have a sing-along,’ he suggests. The problem is, the only songs he can play in full are his own. It’s just like in The Office when David Brent inflicts his songs on everyone, I can’t help but think as I am forced to listen to a song about defecating on an ex-lover’s kitchen table. Nice.
I open my notebook and try to block it all out. I’ll write despite the distractions. That’s what real writers do, isn’t it? I try to write the next part of the novel but it doesn’t work. I lie back in the grass and stare at the exquisite blue sky. In my mind, I escape into the world of the novel. I see my characters looking down from the treetops at me. If I can keep them with me I won’t lose the novel.
I wish I’d brought the Nick magazine with me, I think, then feel a surge of panic and separation anxiety.
My phone buzzes. There is a message from the real world. I eagerly read the text that awaits. It’s from a friend.’
‘Just crossed Chapel Street,’ it says. ‘Nick Cave almost ran me over.’
The muse is playing a cruel trick on me, I think. The work-for-the-dole sing-along of one drones on. For the first time since becoming unemployed I feel depressed and utterly demoralised.

DAY 2 AND ALL THAT FOLLOW:
The days all blend into one. There is minimal filming (at least there is some) but it only involves the one or two people in the scene, usually screaming and hitting someone over the head. So the rest of us sit around for hours. Just sit. Waiting. A hole has torn through Nick Cave’s face. Perhaps I coveted it a little too much.
In the months that I’m there we write for a total of 10 minutes. I think we only did that to humour me.
We watch more videos and DVDs than I care to remember. Some are interesting. Some are not. I feel I’m being babysat. My writing slowly disintegrates.
We go on excursions to ‘our leader’s’ home. He has a studio there and those who can sing, record tracks. The rest of us sit around and talk. I try to write: it doesn’t happen. I scribble a lot, and in everything I can find. I scribble so many glasses and moustaches and pimples on models in magazines I wonder whether I’m forging my way into a new career as a graffiti artist.
Our co-ordinator suggests we grab an instrument and ‘jam’. Good idea, except that we, here, are not musicians. I hit a cowbell for about an hour and wonder how I can work it into my job skills on my CV.
We lay down backing vocals on a death-metal track. By vocals I mean high-pitched primal screaming. Perhaps it’s purgation. Someone chants, ‘Satan, Satan’ over and over again then never returns to work-for-the-dole. She is not to be seen or heard of again.
An old boss calls unexpectedly and offers me some casual work, and I am gradually eased out of the program. On my last day we finally do some hands-on work. We get to edit a sliver of film. This is what I thought we’d be doing and I revel in finally doing something creative. The footage is of someone running through the office, screaming and going insane to the death-metal track in the background. I know how he feels.
I discover the special effects and go crazy myself. I work at a manic pace. The screaming face swirls and explodes from the screen. I leave behind me a manic, howling fiend and wonder what the point of that project was.

6 MONTHS LATER- CENTRELINK:
Today I hand in my Mutual Obligation Diary. Although I’m off the work-for-the-dole program I have to declare my job search efforts and confirm my casual work hours and earnings.
I am writing again, have sent short film scripts, stories and articles to producers and editors, have even had a story snapped up by a US editor but none of this goes into my diary or fortnightly forms. It’s not considered relevant to my job search.
So I apply for nine-to-five jobs and don’t even score an interview, and hardly even a reply. Some of us, I guess, just aren’t nine-to-fivers. Some of us aren’t cut out for the office.
I arrive at Centrelink later than I’d like. Optimum time to arrive is as early as possible but my morning is spent finalising my diary, writing out new job applications to send later, and by the time I get to Centrelink the queue stretches out to forever.
I take my place and the junkie standing outside jumps in front of me in the queue and says, ‘ I was here first.’ I let him in. I let it go. I’m not here for a fight but when he wanders in and out every two minutes or so I wonder why I’m still holding his place for him.
No, I’ll stay positive, I think. I won’t succumb to the negativity of this place. The queue moves slowly, so slowly, to the front. I remain positive when the junkie sings along to the radio and spits an Eminem song into my ear. I even remain positive when the DJ asks callers to ring in and tell him whether they prefer sex or chocolate, and Slim Shady (as I’ve renamed the junkie) repeatedly leers at me and whispers: ‘Sex’.
I’m nearing the front and Slim Shady is on his phone to his friends. ‘There’s only two people in front of me,’ he says.
Forty-five minutes in line and I’m almost free of him. I’m almost there when Slim Shady’s friends all rock up clutching dole forms in their sweaty hands and jump into the queue in front of me. That’s when something snaps.
‘No, no, no, no! These people weren’t here. I’m next,’ I tell the guy behind the counter.
‘He was holding our place,’ someone says of Slim Shady. ‘We were here the whole time. Didn’t you see us?’
No one behind me backs me up. No one says a word. They’ve sized up the enemy. I, on the other hand, don’t choose my enemies wisely. I stand in a queue where the most commonly heard conversation of the day involved the question, ‘When did you get out of prison?’ and pick a fight with the roughest she-diamond there.
I claim my place in front and am not backing down. The guy at the counter accepts my form and I hear a voice like a chainsaw behind me say, ‘Let’s get her after.’ Great.
I’m told to wait for an interview. I’ll be waiting for about 30 minutes, they say, and I take a seat. After five minutes the enemy approaches.
‘I’ve got your address,’ she says in her prison voice and I pretend not to hear her. I count on two things: a) she’s bluffing and b) she’s blown too many brain cells on substances to retain my address in her head for very long.
Thirty minutes pass, an hour, an hour and a half. Names are called: mine isn’t one of them. People arrive then they depart but I sit there. I consider joining the queue again to find out why I haven’t been called but I’ve developed a fear of queues. And I think that when I’m in the queue my name will be called and I won’t hear it. So I wait.
The security guard takes pity.
‘You’ve been here for ages,’ he says. ‘I’ll find out what’s happening.’
He says someone will see me soon. I don’t know when soon is but another 30 minutes pass and I’m the only one still there. Things turn into some kind of warped sketch comedy.
Staff members step out of their cubicles calling the names of people who aren’t there. ‘David? Anthony? Peter?’ I am very obviously the only person there and I am very obviously female.
‘They’re not here but I am,’ I cry. ‘Can someone please see me?’
The security guard comes over and sits with me again, braves an attempt to hit on me, gives up, then says he’ll check again for me. Is this karma, I wonder?
Finally a woman calls my name.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ she says. ‘Someone processed it without the interview and didn’t call you.’
‘So, I didn’t need to spend the whole day here?’
‘No,’ she says.
‘And I don’t need to be interviewed?’
‘No.’
I step out and see that the day is almost over. I think about the job applications I now can’t send, the story deadline I’ve missed, and the gnawing hole in my stomach where my lunch should have been. And as the sky grows darker I wonder whether there’s an ex-crim waiting to reconfigure my face when I get home.
You know, Mr Howard, I could probably get a job, if you and yours stopped wasting my bloody time.

#

This piece was written some years ago and it's all true.
While I don't write a lot ofnon-fiction the frustration I felt with the whole Centrelink
debacle had to come out somehow.
Hence this piece. I did think about sending it somewhere but
never quite got around to it,
so here it shall live.

Flightless Wings and Tentative Steps

2008-02-03T19:24:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure about this blogging world and why I'm choosing to step into it. I don't know if it'll hold me here or distract me from the other writing, whether I'll stay, or what I want to do with it, but it has coaxed me here; an experiment, a step into an unknown, perhaps, self-indulgent realm. Certainly a world of uncomfortable exposure. I may not come here often, the pages may remain barren, or perhaps they will flourish. I don't know.
It's the words that bring me here.The stories. Mine and others.
What direction it will take remains to be seen. Named Beautiful Freak after an as yet unfinished novel I've been writing, about a boy with flightless wings and tentative steps. It's as good a name as any. And, for now, a tentative step has been taken.