What a disastrous decade that was. There's a tendency among Gen Xers to romanticise this time, just as every generation does of its childhood era. But let me tell you: very few people in my neck of the woods were interested or able to taste the few cultural highlights (like Danish teak furniture, Marimekko fabrics, new wave music and The Female Eunuch). Most people opted for ugly mission brown and burnt orange over-stuffed lounges, macrame wall hangings, ABBA and Charlie's Angels. Men twisted feminist ideas into self-serving crap: having sex is like having a coffee, no big deal, why should you be jealous, don't be so uptight. Women were herded into frizzing their hair and dressing like earth mothers or Swedish vamps.
All that stuff on TV about Woodstock and free love made suburban dads restless. Mine started wearing body shirts and growing sideburns. Then he left mum for the neighbour's wife, so I had to do my Senior exams with an abscess pounding in one ear and mum pummelling the other: if you ever have an affair with a married man, I'll never talk to you again. (Like that was supposed to deter me?)
Somehow I managed to do so well in my exams that I could have easily got into Law or some other lucrative career path. Instead I chose art college and found myself drawing plaster casts of nude figures (life modelling was illegal back then in Queensland!) and arranging bits of dowel on planks (they called it 3D studies). Disillusioned, I dropped out and applied to a college in Toowoomba which offered the first film and TV course in Australia and the chance to study visual and performing arts at the same time. It was the Whitlam era. All the lecturers were American expats, failed actors and painters who boasted about their "busts" for civil rights protests and recreational drug use. They didn't believe in structured classes or passing value judgements on students' work. No one could fail: the only assessments were "complete" or "incomplete". Toowoomba was a very odd location for such an experiment. In those days it was full of rich pastoralists cruising the streets in Rolls Royces and Bentleys with windscreen stickers complaining about Whitlam's abolition of the super-phosphate bounty. People would stop, wind down their windows, remove their sunglasses and stare at the weird college students. Forced by economics and logistics to hitchhike to college each day, I heard the line every second day: "Can I ask you a personal question? Are you an advocate of free love?" Puke.
I fought with the college director, an evil egotist who'd once appeared in "The Cruel Sea" with Robert Mitchum and had been married at one stage to Agnes Morehead (of TV's "Bewitched" Fame). I'd been his pet to begin with, but later I began to object to his power games. He cast us all in his personal dramatisation of Walt Whitman's poetry. Men could wear jeans and T shirts, but women were forced to wear body stockings. I thought it was exploitative. He thought I was an uptight bitch. Even more disillusioned, I dropped out again and got pregnant (accidentally on purpose) to a man I'd married so I could get tertiary allowance.
Naively I thought that looking after a baby would be like caring for a cat. A nature child at heart, I didn't bother going to classes or reading books. I fervently believed everything would just click into place. It didn't.
To be continued...
Friday, April 2, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Literature or what?
Blurt, blurt, blurt--that's what blogging's about. Forget the composition. Never mind the quality of expression or idea. Just spew. I'm not good at it, I know. My son, on the other hand, is an enthusiastic and accomplished proponent. He's prolific, natural, entertaining. Must be a generational thing. Anyway, stung by anonymous criticisms, let me have another stab at the business. I've had a few drinks (OK, many drinks) and I can't sleep. Too many things are on my mind.
Number one: what makes one book literary, prize-worthy, collectable, memorable, treasured, while another is at most amusing, diverting? I've recently finished reading two books by Orhan Pamuk--The Museum of Innocence and Istanbul: Memories and the City. I was drawn to them because I'll be visiting Istanbul soon and I read an intriguing review in The Age (Melbourne's metro broadsheet). I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I half suspected that Pamuk's recent Nobel Prize for Literature was more about ideological barrows (pushing niche nobility) than absolute merit. But I was truly humbled by what I discovered.
A writer friend of mine thinks that it's writing style that distinguishes literature from pulp (gross exaggeration but this is a blog after all). But if that's so, translations will always fall short of the mark. And even allowing for the translation gap, I can't say I've been enchanted by Pamuk's sentence and chapter construction. On the other hand, I've been deeply and mysteriously affected by his canvas craft. Interesting. He has something to say, and he does it slowly, deliberately, unbloggingly. Long live the blurt-free form.
Secondly, I had lunch today with one of my longest-standing and most controversial friends. We've had our ups and downs to say the least, including five years or so when I classed her as enemy. Long story. But life is short. If you expect people to be perfect, you'll soon be alone. I have many gripes with this woman, but also many commonalities. She's another bad girl, larger than life, flawed but fabulous.
The connecting thought? On YouTube, I heard Pamuk talking about how novels taught him about the value of individual choice versus cultural conformity. Relationships are a case in point. Accept the whole package or move on. Neat details don't necessarily add up to worthwhile bundles.
Number one: what makes one book literary, prize-worthy, collectable, memorable, treasured, while another is at most amusing, diverting? I've recently finished reading two books by Orhan Pamuk--The Museum of Innocence and Istanbul: Memories and the City. I was drawn to them because I'll be visiting Istanbul soon and I read an intriguing review in The Age (Melbourne's metro broadsheet). I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I half suspected that Pamuk's recent Nobel Prize for Literature was more about ideological barrows (pushing niche nobility) than absolute merit. But I was truly humbled by what I discovered.
A writer friend of mine thinks that it's writing style that distinguishes literature from pulp (gross exaggeration but this is a blog after all). But if that's so, translations will always fall short of the mark. And even allowing for the translation gap, I can't say I've been enchanted by Pamuk's sentence and chapter construction. On the other hand, I've been deeply and mysteriously affected by his canvas craft. Interesting. He has something to say, and he does it slowly, deliberately, unbloggingly. Long live the blurt-free form.
Secondly, I had lunch today with one of my longest-standing and most controversial friends. We've had our ups and downs to say the least, including five years or so when I classed her as enemy. Long story. But life is short. If you expect people to be perfect, you'll soon be alone. I have many gripes with this woman, but also many commonalities. She's another bad girl, larger than life, flawed but fabulous.
The connecting thought? On YouTube, I heard Pamuk talking about how novels taught him about the value of individual choice versus cultural conformity. Relationships are a case in point. Accept the whole package or move on. Neat details don't necessarily add up to worthwhile bundles.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Are you out there, Rod?
My brother, Rod Schneider, has been missing for more than ten years. Tomorrow is his birthday. In the hope that he might happen upon this blog in a googling moment, I am posting something I wrote for him:
Why did you disappear, Rod? When did the rot set in to break the bonds between us? Back in 1980 when you left your first wife and destroyed the business you built with my first husband? Or five years later when you came to France, outraged my second man’s family and ruined my thirtieth birthday party? Who felt worse each time? You, with guilt? Or me, with a sense of betrayal?
I thought we were back on track in 1995 when I visited you in Germany. You were my astonishing baby brother again – intense, moody and occasionally explosive, but as interesting and insightful as you had ever been. I thought we had forgiven each other’s mad moments. Wounded children become wounded adults, don’t they? We had some excuses.
And there we were – me forty, you thirty-eight – both successful and resolved in our own ways. I was a senior public affairs manager in a big corporation. I had two kids and a cute place in an inner Sydney suburb that was gentrifying by the day. Sadly, I didn’t have the relationship side sorted, but you did. You seemed happy with your second wife, Friedericke, and she seemed far warmer than when you’d brought her to my thirtieth birthday debacle. You had made your apartment in an obscure German village gorgeous and gadgety. And you didn’t give a damn that she made the money while you dabbled in astrology, soap-making and software development. We had forged ahead in opposite directions and in some ways we had both reached our peak.
You had always been handsome, in the sort of boy-poet way that made women want to mother and brother you. But now you had matured into a striking wizard of a man – so much so that I didn’t recognise you when you met me at Frankfurt airport. After ten years, I still had a vivid picture of you in my mind, but I hadn’t added long hair and subtracted five kilos. I was standing there waiting for you when a complete stranger took my breath away. He looked like Daniel Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans – tall, bony and beautiful with streaming hair of coal, copper and silver. Only as he came close did I see those blue eyes burning into mine and realise that it was you. No one looking on would have imagined I was your sister – I was so different in colouring and tone. My hair was as long but completely copper, my face was girly rather than gaunt, and my manner was as light and airy as yours was intensely focused. Indeed, you looked more like Friedericke’s sister. The snowy-haired Christmas tree angel I remembered from ten years before now mirrored your new starved, scrubbed and androgynous style.
Purposefully, you led us to the train station below the airport and we bought tickets for Saarbrucken. Once we were on our way, you relaxed and we started bouncing ideas off each other the way we used to as teenagers. It was my first time in Germany and I was struck by the brutal edge to the architecture, signage and systems I saw around us. Pointing to a chocolate billboard advertisement, you said that the slogan “quadratisch, praktisch, gut” meant "square, practical, good”. “Where else in the world would people sell chocolate that way?” you asked with a mixture of contempt and admiration. At Saarbrucken, we caught a bus to Lummershied and then walked to your apartment in the basement of a large house. It was decorated beautifully and imaginatively, just as I had expected, but I sensed something dark and forbidding about the place. Your in-laws owned it and lived above you, but there was little contact and even less warmth between the two households. You didn’t introduce me to them for days and only spoke of them in the harshest of terms. But I wasn’t particularly concerned at the time. I shiver now when I think back to the call you made to our sister before you vanished, claiming one of Friedericke’s relatives was threatening your lives.
I presumed you were just being melodramatic. We’re both inclined that way, you have to admit. And it’s perfectly understandable, given our manic genes and depressive upbringing. But you’ve been missing so long, I sometimes imagine that you really were in danger and perhaps the worst happened and you’re dead and no one found your body, or identified it, or knew we existed to inform us.
Deep down, though, I am certain you’re alive and you’ve just cut us off. Maybe you regret that rash decision but can’t bring yourself to reverse it. And that’s the problem – not knowing. For you, that’s probably the point. You want us to suffer. Back in 1995, you kept describing yourself as “cruel but fair”. Sure, it was a line straight out of Monty Python and there was a glint of the old Rod’s cutting wit in the way you used it, but you meant what you said. Nothing is more serious than a joke, is it?
That was one of the life observations we mulled over that cold, wet month of May 1995. For three days we were cooped up inside your apartment, unable to make the excursions you had planned for my visit. Instead you cooked delicious vegan meals, which was an extraordinary feat considering your long list of banned ingredients (meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy products) and your special quirks (like measuring everything to the nanogram and cutting back anything even remotely indulgent). When we ate, I was obliged to drink my wine alone because you never touched the stuff. I even had to buy a corkscrew because you saw no use for such a utensil. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves. We played the occasional game of Scrabble or Five Hundred, but mostly we talked … and talked … and talked.
We discussed every aspect of art from graphic design to grand literature and we plunged into astrology, numerology and tarot to analyse personalities and relationships. I read your cards and you meditated on the natal charts of everyone in my worry basket. I was at a turning point – the classic mid-life crisis – and you were head-butt blunt in your advice. Cruel but fair, you kept on saying.
One comment in particular still haunts me. We talked about regrets. Do you remember? You asked me if I had any regrets and I said I didn’t. I felt I’d done the best I could at every point of my life and the mistakes I’d made were all part of the rich pattern of life. Without pain, how could anyone appreciate pleasure? You shook your head. For you, my answer meant I’d learned nothing and I was doomed to keep stumbling in the dark. My riposte was worthy of Sophocles, I thought back then. “That’s exactly the point!” I said. “I have learned valuable lessons from all of my mistakes. So why regret them? They’ve spurred positive change.”
After all this time, I understand the scornful look on your face when you heard this. I wasn’t facing up to my regrets back then, but I’ve more than made up for that since. I need to tell you about that. I need to talk to you adult to adult. I’ve finally grown up. Menopause has worked magic for me. I see things so much more clearly without the hormonal rages that screwed up my emotions and skewed my judgement.
More importantly, though, there is so much family news you should know. Mum is now living here in Melbourne. Our sister, Marilyn, had a stroke that fried the front part of her brain, but she seems happy and has remarried. There are new babies – Stephen’s and Carmina's daughter and son in Barcelona, Kate’s and Anna's son here in Melbourne. I’ve finally found a solid relationship. John and I have been together for more than eleven years now.
Who would have thought I could do it? Not you. You told me in 1995 that I seduced men with my femininity and then dismayed them with the full story – that I was a harpy, I suppose. You clearly disapproved of my taste in men and most likely how I played the game. They deserved everything I dished out, you said. Cruel as you were, I must admit you were pretty fair in your assessment. And strange as it may sound, I appreciated that.
I miss you, Rod. So do Mum and Marilyn. I can’t hunt you down again. When I tried that, I alienated you even more. So I am writing this. Perhaps you will think of us on your birthday.
This is what i want to tell you – you are more than blood. I would like you whether you were related or not. You have infuriating bad qualities. So do we all. You are intelligent, funny and soulful – the three qualities I demand of friends. I admire your inventiveness, your fine taste and your philosophical depth. I feel protective about you. I cannot like any man without comparing him to you. You were my first real friend. Where are you?
Why did you disappear, Rod? When did the rot set in to break the bonds between us? Back in 1980 when you left your first wife and destroyed the business you built with my first husband? Or five years later when you came to France, outraged my second man’s family and ruined my thirtieth birthday party? Who felt worse each time? You, with guilt? Or me, with a sense of betrayal?
I thought we were back on track in 1995 when I visited you in Germany. You were my astonishing baby brother again – intense, moody and occasionally explosive, but as interesting and insightful as you had ever been. I thought we had forgiven each other’s mad moments. Wounded children become wounded adults, don’t they? We had some excuses.
And there we were – me forty, you thirty-eight – both successful and resolved in our own ways. I was a senior public affairs manager in a big corporation. I had two kids and a cute place in an inner Sydney suburb that was gentrifying by the day. Sadly, I didn’t have the relationship side sorted, but you did. You seemed happy with your second wife, Friedericke, and she seemed far warmer than when you’d brought her to my thirtieth birthday debacle. You had made your apartment in an obscure German village gorgeous and gadgety. And you didn’t give a damn that she made the money while you dabbled in astrology, soap-making and software development. We had forged ahead in opposite directions and in some ways we had both reached our peak.
You had always been handsome, in the sort of boy-poet way that made women want to mother and brother you. But now you had matured into a striking wizard of a man – so much so that I didn’t recognise you when you met me at Frankfurt airport. After ten years, I still had a vivid picture of you in my mind, but I hadn’t added long hair and subtracted five kilos. I was standing there waiting for you when a complete stranger took my breath away. He looked like Daniel Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans – tall, bony and beautiful with streaming hair of coal, copper and silver. Only as he came close did I see those blue eyes burning into mine and realise that it was you. No one looking on would have imagined I was your sister – I was so different in colouring and tone. My hair was as long but completely copper, my face was girly rather than gaunt, and my manner was as light and airy as yours was intensely focused. Indeed, you looked more like Friedericke’s sister. The snowy-haired Christmas tree angel I remembered from ten years before now mirrored your new starved, scrubbed and androgynous style.
Purposefully, you led us to the train station below the airport and we bought tickets for Saarbrucken. Once we were on our way, you relaxed and we started bouncing ideas off each other the way we used to as teenagers. It was my first time in Germany and I was struck by the brutal edge to the architecture, signage and systems I saw around us. Pointing to a chocolate billboard advertisement, you said that the slogan “quadratisch, praktisch, gut” meant "square, practical, good”. “Where else in the world would people sell chocolate that way?” you asked with a mixture of contempt and admiration. At Saarbrucken, we caught a bus to Lummershied and then walked to your apartment in the basement of a large house. It was decorated beautifully and imaginatively, just as I had expected, but I sensed something dark and forbidding about the place. Your in-laws owned it and lived above you, but there was little contact and even less warmth between the two households. You didn’t introduce me to them for days and only spoke of them in the harshest of terms. But I wasn’t particularly concerned at the time. I shiver now when I think back to the call you made to our sister before you vanished, claiming one of Friedericke’s relatives was threatening your lives.
I presumed you were just being melodramatic. We’re both inclined that way, you have to admit. And it’s perfectly understandable, given our manic genes and depressive upbringing. But you’ve been missing so long, I sometimes imagine that you really were in danger and perhaps the worst happened and you’re dead and no one found your body, or identified it, or knew we existed to inform us.
Deep down, though, I am certain you’re alive and you’ve just cut us off. Maybe you regret that rash decision but can’t bring yourself to reverse it. And that’s the problem – not knowing. For you, that’s probably the point. You want us to suffer. Back in 1995, you kept describing yourself as “cruel but fair”. Sure, it was a line straight out of Monty Python and there was a glint of the old Rod’s cutting wit in the way you used it, but you meant what you said. Nothing is more serious than a joke, is it?
That was one of the life observations we mulled over that cold, wet month of May 1995. For three days we were cooped up inside your apartment, unable to make the excursions you had planned for my visit. Instead you cooked delicious vegan meals, which was an extraordinary feat considering your long list of banned ingredients (meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy products) and your special quirks (like measuring everything to the nanogram and cutting back anything even remotely indulgent). When we ate, I was obliged to drink my wine alone because you never touched the stuff. I even had to buy a corkscrew because you saw no use for such a utensil. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves. We played the occasional game of Scrabble or Five Hundred, but mostly we talked … and talked … and talked.
We discussed every aspect of art from graphic design to grand literature and we plunged into astrology, numerology and tarot to analyse personalities and relationships. I read your cards and you meditated on the natal charts of everyone in my worry basket. I was at a turning point – the classic mid-life crisis – and you were head-butt blunt in your advice. Cruel but fair, you kept on saying.
One comment in particular still haunts me. We talked about regrets. Do you remember? You asked me if I had any regrets and I said I didn’t. I felt I’d done the best I could at every point of my life and the mistakes I’d made were all part of the rich pattern of life. Without pain, how could anyone appreciate pleasure? You shook your head. For you, my answer meant I’d learned nothing and I was doomed to keep stumbling in the dark. My riposte was worthy of Sophocles, I thought back then. “That’s exactly the point!” I said. “I have learned valuable lessons from all of my mistakes. So why regret them? They’ve spurred positive change.”
After all this time, I understand the scornful look on your face when you heard this. I wasn’t facing up to my regrets back then, but I’ve more than made up for that since. I need to tell you about that. I need to talk to you adult to adult. I’ve finally grown up. Menopause has worked magic for me. I see things so much more clearly without the hormonal rages that screwed up my emotions and skewed my judgement.
More importantly, though, there is so much family news you should know. Mum is now living here in Melbourne. Our sister, Marilyn, had a stroke that fried the front part of her brain, but she seems happy and has remarried. There are new babies – Stephen’s and Carmina's daughter and son in Barcelona, Kate’s and Anna's son here in Melbourne. I’ve finally found a solid relationship. John and I have been together for more than eleven years now.
Who would have thought I could do it? Not you. You told me in 1995 that I seduced men with my femininity and then dismayed them with the full story – that I was a harpy, I suppose. You clearly disapproved of my taste in men and most likely how I played the game. They deserved everything I dished out, you said. Cruel as you were, I must admit you were pretty fair in your assessment. And strange as it may sound, I appreciated that.
I miss you, Rod. So do Mum and Marilyn. I can’t hunt you down again. When I tried that, I alienated you even more. So I am writing this. Perhaps you will think of us on your birthday.
This is what i want to tell you – you are more than blood. I would like you whether you were related or not. You have infuriating bad qualities. So do we all. You are intelligent, funny and soulful – the three qualities I demand of friends. I admire your inventiveness, your fine taste and your philosophical depth. I feel protective about you. I cannot like any man without comparing him to you. You were my first real friend. Where are you?
Monday, January 11, 2010
When to let go
At the 2008 Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne, one speaker offered some advice which stuck with me. "The world is not hanging out for your book," she said. "Take your time. Get it right. Wait until you're truly happy with it." A few months later, the speaker at another workshop I'd signed up for advised the opposite. "Don't hang onto your manuscript too long. Let it go. Take the chance at getting helpful feedback."
I puzzled about the apparent contradiction. Then I realised both bits of advice were spot on, depending upon the writer's personality and the manuscript's stage of development.
When I finished my first draft, I was impatient and over-confident. After years in the corporate world, I'd been indoctrinated in the 80/20 rule. It was more important for me to meet deadlines than drag the chain on minor details. What I didn't understand at the time was the benefit of perspective. You can't judge your own work without getting some distance from it.
So, after several strong doses of feedback about the shortcomings in my work, I started diving deeper into my ideas and their expression. Seven minor redrafts and one major redraft later, I'm experiencing the other side of the timing dilemma. I'm scared of letting go. Having put so much of myself into this book now, I'm much more afraid of failure than earlier in the piece when it was more of a mental vs emotional exercise.
A long time ago my brother told me that I should follow my intuition rather than my impulse. Differentiating one from the other has never been easy for me, because I'm hot-headed. But if I relax and let my cannier side come through, my timing is usually impeccable. I'm almost ready. And I know I'll know when I should try again.
I puzzled about the apparent contradiction. Then I realised both bits of advice were spot on, depending upon the writer's personality and the manuscript's stage of development.
When I finished my first draft, I was impatient and over-confident. After years in the corporate world, I'd been indoctrinated in the 80/20 rule. It was more important for me to meet deadlines than drag the chain on minor details. What I didn't understand at the time was the benefit of perspective. You can't judge your own work without getting some distance from it.
So, after several strong doses of feedback about the shortcomings in my work, I started diving deeper into my ideas and their expression. Seven minor redrafts and one major redraft later, I'm experiencing the other side of the timing dilemma. I'm scared of letting go. Having put so much of myself into this book now, I'm much more afraid of failure than earlier in the piece when it was more of a mental vs emotional exercise.
A long time ago my brother told me that I should follow my intuition rather than my impulse. Differentiating one from the other has never been easy for me, because I'm hot-headed. But if I relax and let my cannier side come through, my timing is usually impeccable. I'm almost ready. And I know I'll know when I should try again.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Return of the anomaly
It feels surreal. I am walking around the streets of a sleepy hilltop hamlet in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland. Courtesy of the workout playlist on my i-pod, Nirvana, Daft Punk and Fatboy Slim hurry my pace. But while my hearing is locked in angsty urban adulthood, every other sense has slipped into a childish netherworld. I am overwhelmed by the smell of wet leaves, ripe fruit and rotting mulch. The taste of sunblock and wet. The feel of hot, heavy air desperate to unload. The sight of palms, ferns and morning glory. Ants swarming over red concrete paths. Cane toads flattened on the bitumen.
No-one passing me with puffing dogs and pleasant smiles is i-podding. No-one is power-walking or wearing black. I am an anomaly. The locals are probably thinking tourist, city type.
In fact, I'm from these parts. I was born and raised in Ipswich, about two hours' drive from here. And I spent the happiest time of my childhood even closer -- living in a caravan at the back of my grandparents' house in Caloundra. My father planned to go into business with my mother's brother, distributing smallgoods in this region. So we camped for a few months while they tried to sell the house in Ipswich. Kids were everywhere. Mum's widowed sister and her three sons lived with Grandma and Granddad. And Mum's brother and his wife lived in the house next door with their four kids. Ten cousins on two blocks. We walked to school barefoot through the sandy scrub and ghostly white gums, making bows and arrows out of wet saplings and dried branches. We threw ourselves into the dumpers at Kings Beach, bobbing up with eyes stinging and noses snorting or tumbling into the wash. We played hopscotch and marbles on dirt roads. We chased each other around after dark, leaping over cane toads.
I ran away from this world twenty years ago. I reconstucted myself. The fear and loathing lessened. The look sharpened. The Queenslanderisms disappeared -- togs replaced by swimmers, port by suitcase, fordy by forty. But this region retains a powerful hold on me. It's where I was last truly carefree.
Later, I'm reminded of this when Mum and I are watching TV and I hear voices outside. The house we're borrowing is down a long steep driveway so I know I'm not hearing harmless passersby. "Who's there?" I call. Through the rippled stained glass surrounding the door, I can see there are children outside. Thinking they're dangerous delinquents on a trick-or-treat mission, I say "We've got nothing for you". Lame I chide myself. "We just want to sing for you," a voice replies. So I open the door on the safety chain and see eight or nine innocent-looking teenage girls. They launch into Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, the back line supplying the comedy. I open the door fully and Mum and I start laughing, as much with embarassed relief as amusement.
When the routine is done, my cousin Robert appears from the shadows. "Three of these girls are related to you," he says. "Which ones?" I ask. "The black ones," a gorgeous Islander girl says. Robert introduces his half-Samoan daughters, aged between 12 and 15. I've never met them before. For that matter, I haven't seen my cousin since he was even younger than they are.
I apologise for our nervousness. We'd just been watching a news report about a home invasion. He says, "I should have known. City folk!" but his tone is cheerful and his visit breaks the ice for the big family bbq we're due to attend the following evening. We go to bed with smiles on our faces. And next day a girl runs past me with i-pod wires flapping.
I don't feel like an anomaly any more.
No-one passing me with puffing dogs and pleasant smiles is i-podding. No-one is power-walking or wearing black. I am an anomaly. The locals are probably thinking tourist, city type.
In fact, I'm from these parts. I was born and raised in Ipswich, about two hours' drive from here. And I spent the happiest time of my childhood even closer -- living in a caravan at the back of my grandparents' house in Caloundra. My father planned to go into business with my mother's brother, distributing smallgoods in this region. So we camped for a few months while they tried to sell the house in Ipswich. Kids were everywhere. Mum's widowed sister and her three sons lived with Grandma and Granddad. And Mum's brother and his wife lived in the house next door with their four kids. Ten cousins on two blocks. We walked to school barefoot through the sandy scrub and ghostly white gums, making bows and arrows out of wet saplings and dried branches. We threw ourselves into the dumpers at Kings Beach, bobbing up with eyes stinging and noses snorting or tumbling into the wash. We played hopscotch and marbles on dirt roads. We chased each other around after dark, leaping over cane toads.
I ran away from this world twenty years ago. I reconstucted myself. The fear and loathing lessened. The look sharpened. The Queenslanderisms disappeared -- togs replaced by swimmers, port by suitcase, fordy by forty. But this region retains a powerful hold on me. It's where I was last truly carefree.
Later, I'm reminded of this when Mum and I are watching TV and I hear voices outside. The house we're borrowing is down a long steep driveway so I know I'm not hearing harmless passersby. "Who's there?" I call. Through the rippled stained glass surrounding the door, I can see there are children outside. Thinking they're dangerous delinquents on a trick-or-treat mission, I say "We've got nothing for you". Lame I chide myself. "We just want to sing for you," a voice replies. So I open the door on the safety chain and see eight or nine innocent-looking teenage girls. They launch into Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, the back line supplying the comedy. I open the door fully and Mum and I start laughing, as much with embarassed relief as amusement.
When the routine is done, my cousin Robert appears from the shadows. "Three of these girls are related to you," he says. "Which ones?" I ask. "The black ones," a gorgeous Islander girl says. Robert introduces his half-Samoan daughters, aged between 12 and 15. I've never met them before. For that matter, I haven't seen my cousin since he was even younger than they are.
I apologise for our nervousness. We'd just been watching a news report about a home invasion. He says, "I should have known. City folk!" but his tone is cheerful and his visit breaks the ice for the big family bbq we're due to attend the following evening. We go to bed with smiles on our faces. And next day a girl runs past me with i-pod wires flapping.
I don't feel like an anomaly any more.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Fear of Christmas
After last year's experience of Christmas, I swore I'd skip the family rituals in 2009 and disappear overseas somewhere. My mate Heather signed up for the getaway option too, but our resolve melted away during the year. Usual problems -- too little money, too much guilt/sense of responsibility.
So I had a big think about why I've never been able to pull off a great Christmas since my kids have grown up.
I decided to shrug off those things I couldn't change:
1. My mother's annual depression / bitchiness attack. One of her brothers died on Christmas Day when she was a child and she's never got over the mixture of grief, guilt and resentment the surviving siblings felt about the occasion.
2. My partner always spends Christmas with his adult children in Perth. Not only do I miss him, but my mother tends to be narkier when I don't have a man around.
On the other hand, I realised that I could do something about the two other big issues:
3. Cramped space. Among my immediate family (spread between Melbourne and Brisbane), no one has enough sleeping and dining space to host a combined shindig.
4. Separation anxiety. Whichever city we plump for, one of us always seems to be out of sorts. Usually it's my son missing his girlfriend and pals.
So what was my brainwave? Lacking the money to rent a big holiday place, I decided to try to swing a house-swap. And guess what -- although I joined an Australian home exchange site and started lobbying there for a deal, it was the international site I belong to that delivered the solution. Out of the blue, even though I hadn't signalled interest in Queensland, I received an offer from a lovely couple in a spot roughly half way between where my son lives and where my daughter will be staying with her in-laws. Hallelujah. I can host a Hannah family shindig and drop in for extended family howdy-doodies.
Now all I have to worry about are the family dramas.
So I had a big think about why I've never been able to pull off a great Christmas since my kids have grown up.
I decided to shrug off those things I couldn't change:
1. My mother's annual depression / bitchiness attack. One of her brothers died on Christmas Day when she was a child and she's never got over the mixture of grief, guilt and resentment the surviving siblings felt about the occasion.
2. My partner always spends Christmas with his adult children in Perth. Not only do I miss him, but my mother tends to be narkier when I don't have a man around.
On the other hand, I realised that I could do something about the two other big issues:
3. Cramped space. Among my immediate family (spread between Melbourne and Brisbane), no one has enough sleeping and dining space to host a combined shindig.
4. Separation anxiety. Whichever city we plump for, one of us always seems to be out of sorts. Usually it's my son missing his girlfriend and pals.
So what was my brainwave? Lacking the money to rent a big holiday place, I decided to try to swing a house-swap. And guess what -- although I joined an Australian home exchange site and started lobbying there for a deal, it was the international site I belong to that delivered the solution. Out of the blue, even though I hadn't signalled interest in Queensland, I received an offer from a lovely couple in a spot roughly half way between where my son lives and where my daughter will be staying with her in-laws. Hallelujah. I can host a Hannah family shindig and drop in for extended family howdy-doodies.
Now all I have to worry about are the family dramas.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
The writing curse
I've asked the question of many writers: why do you write? The most common answer boils down to "I just have to; I've always felt that way". In other words it's a form of madness. An obsession.
When I told my boss that I wanted to leave a lucrative corporate job so I could write, he thought I was having a nervous breakdown. He couldn't believe any sane person would accept such a dismal risk-reward equation. The HR supremo, who was sitting in on the discussion (it was during my annual review), sensibly pointed out that corporate warriors might never reach the giddy heights available to entrepreneurs, but they don't risk falling into an abyss either. They're cushioned. Usually in a rats' nest of politics and self-delusion, but a cushy rat's nest. Then Mister HR asked a question that surprised me: "Are you running away from this world or running towards another?" After consideration, I had to admit it was a bit of both, so I agreed to stay on another year. I wanted to make sure my motivation was entirely positive.
I was so affected by this distinction between running away and towards, that I adopted it as the core idea of the novel I have now almost finished writing. At least I thought so until CJS (are you still out there?) started me thinking about why writers devote themselves to particular stories (see comment on "So you don't like Heathcliff?" post).
The idea for my book came in one big hit. A long time ago, I answered a dodgy job ad. An American film producer was looking for a PA and I wanted a fast track for my (then) screen-writing ambitions. In those days I was blissfully bohemian and therefore an object of fascination for many of the rich, powerful men I encountered professionally. The less impressed I was by their drive and status, the more intrigued they were. So my interview with the producer turned into a bizarre butterfly chase. The project was a biopic of one of my favourite writers and the money, travel and glamour made my mouth water. With all the wit and charm I could muster, I made my pitch for the job. It wasn't easy. The producer was smooth and sharp and a master of mind games. But I flitted around the ring like Muhammad Ali and he eventually said the job was mine if I stayed the night. By this stage, however, I realised I'd have to be Girl Friday 24/7 to Svengali himself. Although I told him I'd have to think about it and he gave me until noon the next day to make up my mind, I'd already decided I didn't want to trade freedom and self-respect for the Hollywood goodies he was offering.
To my astonishment, though, not one of my (then) girlfriends understood my decision. And years later, seeing fame-lust sweep across the world, I wondered what sort of woman would have taken the deal, and why, and then what would have transpired. There's a lot of me in the central character, Chloe, but much that's different too. Otherwise she wouldn't have come to a different decision. Nevertheless, the more I got into imagining this Sliding Doors scenario, the more I felt that Chloe's emotional story would resemble my own, even if the circumstances differed.
Have I written this story to show I made the right decision refusing Hollywood? Or at least that I didn't make a wrong decision? It's an interesting point, CJS. I've grown as a person writing this book. It's been a painful experience at times. Fun other times. But I just had to do it.
When I told my boss that I wanted to leave a lucrative corporate job so I could write, he thought I was having a nervous breakdown. He couldn't believe any sane person would accept such a dismal risk-reward equation. The HR supremo, who was sitting in on the discussion (it was during my annual review), sensibly pointed out that corporate warriors might never reach the giddy heights available to entrepreneurs, but they don't risk falling into an abyss either. They're cushioned. Usually in a rats' nest of politics and self-delusion, but a cushy rat's nest. Then Mister HR asked a question that surprised me: "Are you running away from this world or running towards another?" After consideration, I had to admit it was a bit of both, so I agreed to stay on another year. I wanted to make sure my motivation was entirely positive.
I was so affected by this distinction between running away and towards, that I adopted it as the core idea of the novel I have now almost finished writing. At least I thought so until CJS (are you still out there?) started me thinking about why writers devote themselves to particular stories (see comment on "So you don't like Heathcliff?" post).
The idea for my book came in one big hit. A long time ago, I answered a dodgy job ad. An American film producer was looking for a PA and I wanted a fast track for my (then) screen-writing ambitions. In those days I was blissfully bohemian and therefore an object of fascination for many of the rich, powerful men I encountered professionally. The less impressed I was by their drive and status, the more intrigued they were. So my interview with the producer turned into a bizarre butterfly chase. The project was a biopic of one of my favourite writers and the money, travel and glamour made my mouth water. With all the wit and charm I could muster, I made my pitch for the job. It wasn't easy. The producer was smooth and sharp and a master of mind games. But I flitted around the ring like Muhammad Ali and he eventually said the job was mine if I stayed the night. By this stage, however, I realised I'd have to be Girl Friday 24/7 to Svengali himself. Although I told him I'd have to think about it and he gave me until noon the next day to make up my mind, I'd already decided I didn't want to trade freedom and self-respect for the Hollywood goodies he was offering.
To my astonishment, though, not one of my (then) girlfriends understood my decision. And years later, seeing fame-lust sweep across the world, I wondered what sort of woman would have taken the deal, and why, and then what would have transpired. There's a lot of me in the central character, Chloe, but much that's different too. Otherwise she wouldn't have come to a different decision. Nevertheless, the more I got into imagining this Sliding Doors scenario, the more I felt that Chloe's emotional story would resemble my own, even if the circumstances differed.
Have I written this story to show I made the right decision refusing Hollywood? Or at least that I didn't make a wrong decision? It's an interesting point, CJS. I've grown as a person writing this book. It's been a painful experience at times. Fun other times. But I just had to do it.
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