Kimberley Writers Festival 2013

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.” 

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

We were sitting in a copse by the edge of the river, listening to authors reading from their works, when thin dust coloured leaves began pinwheeling toward the earth with the most extraordinary grace.  They seemed circularly suspended, independent of gravity, travelling in wide loop-de-loops, their mother tree whispering over them.  I was so astonished by the little leaves that I held my hand out hoping one would eventually come to rest in it.  Ali Cobby Eckermann leaned a little closer to me and said: "Spirits".

I have spent the last four days in the Kimberley, having been invited to present at the Kimberley Writers Festival.  I'd only been there a couple of hours before I understood why this is the Festival everybody wants to be invited to.  And invited back to.

It's the joy.  There are few, if any, formalities here - just a love of stories and the people who tell them.  And this is a place full of stories.  You can feel it.  The air tastes different and the rocks speak.  The sun simmers your bone marrow and the river listens.  I pressed my palms against the hot skin of a paperbark on Sunday and hoped for just a little transference, hoped that when I had to leave some remnant of the place would continue to thrum in me.

The community embraced us with an affection and enthusiasm that is representative of the Festival itself.  The school day presented the opportunity to speak with some remarkable young adults as well as coordinate a writing workshop for Year Sevens.  On the public discussion panels I was fortunate enough to share a couch with Deb Fitzpatrick, Robert Schofield and Marie Munkara - and when I wasn't on the couch I was in the audience listening to Julienne Van Loon, Terry Denton, Ron Elliott, Craig Smith, Susan Duncan and Ali Cobby Eckermann.

Jo Roach and her inimitable, tireless team managed to keep us all where we were supposed to be when we were supposed to be there (or as she calls it "herding cats"), and provided me with a real experience of this community and the hot, living earth that cradles it.  I haven't just felt well looked after, I've felt real affection in the enthusiasm I've experienced here, and I reciprocate wholeheartedly.

The food, the wine, the people, the stories, the spirits.  It all comes back to the stories and the spirits for me.  I had that moment encapsulated by those little leaves.  One of them skidded past my index finger but refused to be caught.  In that moment, when the spirits were mooching about in the shadow of those blood-rust cliffs, and people with stories to tell were telling their stories, I realized just how insignificant we are.  That's comforting.

Bats In The Belfry

“We can't stop here, this is bat country!”   - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

It’s the only thing that keeps me going sometimes, the realization that I’m in bat country.  I can’t stop here.  It’s the threat of them, you see.  Those sleek, fat-gutted, kitten-faced, leather-and-vein-seraphim that can shit all over you if you stand still for too long.  They come out of the dark, deliberately, honing in on the breathing of the ones who stop, screaming their echolocation aria into the bones until the whole body is mapped, string-bagged, and strung-up.  You daren’t stop just in case, when you do decide to move on, it's too late and you just...can’t.

Those of you who have been in bat country will know exactly what I’m talking about.  The memory of tiny teeth gnawing on your brainstem and the comfort of fetid air turned over like a fog on the tip of cold wing will stir in you just as you read this.  The temptation to stand still long enough for bat shit to harden around you until you are nothing but an unrecognizable remnant, like a Pompeian blitzed by the pyroclastic  surge, is powerful.  They can chip out the hollow that used to be me in some future archaeological dig and say: “This one stood still too long.”

For those of you who have been fortunate enough to avoid bat country, I suppose a definition may be in order.  Bat country is that dark, dark place where you become hot-dry and cold-damp at the same time; where limbs are nightmare heavy and strangely disobedient; where things that would frighten children nestle like loved ones in the nook of your sadness; where you dream of sleeping long and deep enough to dream again.  It’s the place re-visitors grow to fear and expect; the place distortion rivals reality; the place decisions scatter like froth; the place pharmacological fortunes have been made. 

But we’re not supposed to talk about bat country.  We’re supposed to wade through it, even as our strength precludes the ducking and weaving we are renowned for and bats torpedo us like June Bugs.  Wipe away their greasy innards and move, move, move.  Don’t stop.  Never stop in bat country.

It’s the only thing that keeps me going sometimes, the realization that I’m in bat country.

"I'll Have the Caesar Salad with a Side of Violence"

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
- John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

It’s been an interesting week...

Today a man attacked a woman in an upscale London restaurant.  One can only imagine the hubris required to hold a pleading woman by the throat over appetizers, in public, as easily as one might pull out a chair for her or pour a glass of wine, without thought to consequences or appearances.  He’s done it before, clearly.  One doesn’t start out on the abuse track by going straight to the public demonstration.

Earlier in the week our Prime Minister was dissected into body parts for an opposition fundraiser menu, the defense being it was a joke and the guests never saw it.  She was then pilloried on radio feedback lines by a public who not only saw no harm but relished putting the bitch back in her place.

Later in the week our Prime Minister was sucker-punched in a live radio interview with questions regarding the sexuality of her partner based upon the fact that he is a hairdresser.  The interviewer crossed so many lines that watching said interview was like taking a face plant off a diving board into an empty pool.  Excruciating.  Support for the fired interviewer continues.

In 2012 Psychobiologist Dario Maestripieri bemoaned the fact that there was a high concentration of unattractive women at the New Orleans Conference of the Society of Neuroscience.  He publically asked why no beautiful women were interested in the brain.

Today I was introduced to a new male employee, about my age, with the caveat: “She’s wonderful.  We lost the two before her to pregnancy.” Then to me: “You’re not getting pregnant are you?”  Raucous male-bonding laughter.  No harm done.  Right?  There was no malice in it. Benevolent sexism at its best.  There is no response other than stewing.

Three waves of feminism: we vote, we lead, we birth and nurture, we work, then we work unpaid inside the home, we love men, we love women, we create and battle and care and produce and contribute and then we get up in the morning and do it all over again.  And I’m still trying to work out why my uterus became the topic in a professional situation.

It’s been an interesting week...

Avoiding Being Eaten By Wolves

A good friend of mine told me that his word of the week is “context”.  He wrote it on a post-it and stuck it to his computer screen.  He’s a paramedic.  He told me the story of a middle aged alcoholic indigenous woman whom he has treated many times, usually after she has been beaten or is in custody.  He told me this woman can “see” him; that she sees beyond the official accoutrements of his uniform and treatment, beyond the efficiency of his ministering and comforting, and in the simple act of holding his hand when she’s really busted up they seem to me to be healing each other.  My friend told me that when he finds himself judging people, he thinks of her.

I haven’t been able to get this story out of my head.  It struck me that we are all, always, relating to each other out of context.  It’s become routine to collide with people throughout the day furiously hiding our own context for fear of judgment, whilst simultaneously judging others as if their circumstances were completely self-created and blame-worthy.  Christ knows I’m guilty of it.  Is it an evolutionary thing, whereby our self-interest is hard-wired from the days we had to step on each other’s backs to get back to the cave before we were eaten by wolves? Or is this a more contemporary development, a symptom of a culture so obsessed with externals that we have been conned into believing: “No one bleeds the same way I do so I’m not sharing my band-aids.”? 

I wonder how things would be different if we recognized that the human being standing in front of us is the product of lots and lots of stories, some they wrote themselves and some they were cast in against their will.

John Cheever’s Y-Fronts

John Cheever wrote in his underwear.  You can’t argue with the results.

For millennia writers and artists have been resorting to interesting and sometimes bizarre ways to contact their imaginary friends.  You can’t tell me some Neanderthal somewhere didn’t draw a stick man on the wall of his mammoth bone house, stare at it for hours, before throwing a tantrum and running out to club a wildebeest instead.  Those wildebeest are a terrible distraction, and yet I hear their siren song every time I sit down at this keyboard lately.  Even a deadline isn’t helping me.  Ever wonder why it’s called a deadline?

So in a further effort to avoid actually achieving anything today I decided to read up on how other writers managed their empty heads.  Of course none of these geniuses would have written a word if they had access to You Tube (I must disable that somehow...)

asdlg;yhy’[kl;;;;;;;;gsigak   (Cat walking across keyboard...better than anything I’ve written today so it bloody stays).  Here are my top picks for getting in the mood...

Truman Capote wrote supine.  He reclined on a sofa and wrote with a martini in one hand.  As the day wore on so did the strength of the drinks.  I tried this.  Lost an olive down my cleavage, dropped my laptop on my face and almost chipped a tooth.

Victor Hugo wrote naked.  He even had his valet hide his clothes so he couldn’t go out and couldn’t receive visitors.  Well, I don’t live alone and clearly don’t have the same relationship with my house mate as Victor had with his valet.

Dan Brown writes for an hour then drops to the floor for a round of pushups, only proving he’s as annoying in the process as he is in the finished product.

Hemingway wrote his 500 words a day standing up at his typewriter, as if trying to squeeze out something worthwhile isn’t punishing enough.  I don’t even like standing up in the shower.  I’ve been looking into those rubber footed shower chairs for old people with vertigo.

Hunter S. Thompson got up at 3.00pm.  He did four lines of cocaine, ate lunch, drank whiskey, did some acid, and got his best work done after midnight.  And I’m looking into rubber footed shower chairs...

So here I sit, sit, with a glass of red, fully dressed with no underwear on, and a fat black cat making more sense than I am.  And they wonder why Amy Lowell switched to cigars...

Squeezing The Cat, Stroking The Guinea Pig...

“There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” - Somerset Maugham

I have been shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year – Older Reader’s Category.  (Pause for that to sink in for me yet again).  I know I should probably be taking this maturely in my stride, writing sage words about the honour and my gratitude (both of which I obviously feel), but I’m too busy squeezing the cat and jumping up and down in secret.

Here’s the thing: I used to be a bookseller.  As a bookseller we waited for the CBCA shortlist announcements in the same way we waited for our birthdays when we were six.  How many sleeps?  Will I get to see my favourites?  This was the big thing.  The Day of the Year.  Mecca.  When I was six, my mum and dad bought me a baby doll and a pram.  The pram had big orange flowers all over it with white tassels dangling from the hood, as soft as my guinea pig.  I got up so early for that present, it was still dark outside.  When I saw my name on the CBCA shortlist I could feel those downy tassels in my hand again.  (I broke the arm off my baby doll because I got frustrated trying to dress her.)

I never imagined I’d be on the shortlist.  I’m gob smacked by the company I’m in.  I only ever wanted to write honestly, in a way that cuts through the bullshit and recognises that young people have real lives that can be fraught and dangerous and poignant and relatable.  And I wanted to write about them without judging them or their judgments about the world they’re navigating.  Don’t you remember what it was like to be teenager? Awful.  Wonderful. 

Katharine England of the Adelaide Advertiser has written that Creepy & Maud “is perhaps the bravest shortlist choice for some years.”  I love this assessment.  I love it because this boy, Creepy, and this girl, Maud, do find some bravery in each other and, as a result, within themselves.  I realize that a “brave” choice for the CBCA may allude to this novel’s ability to push certain buttons and boundaries, however I embrace the term “brave” as representative of even one young adult who reads this book and realizes they are right to feel out of whack and misunderstood, and that the pain of that marginalization will make them stronger before it dissipates.

The CBCA Shortlist - Older Readers Catagory

Neil Grant - The Ink Bridge
Margo Lanagan - Sea Hearts
Doug MacLeod - The Shiny Guys
Dianne Touchell - Creepy & Maud
Vikki Wakefield - Friday Brown
Suzy Zail - The Wrong Boy

Are We There Yet?

“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love” – Ernest Hemingway

We’ve all been on those road trips, both as children and adults.  I remember sitting in the back seat of my parent’s old green Holden driving to Bunbury to visit my father’s cousin’s dairy farm when I was little, struggling for space with two equally bored sisters who came up with the game of let’s-annoy-each-other-for-fun at precisely the same time I did, motivating a bitch-slapping counterpoint of “Knock it off!” from front seat parents who were probably thinking they should have left us in the back yard with a bowl of water, like they did the dog.

Then you’re a parent yourself and travelling with small children who never shut the fuck up, fart in the car without warning, constantly complain of being bored despite your fanatical faith in the Game Boy you thrust at them as soon as the ignition key is turned, and they always need to pee precisely five minutes after you have pulled out of the gas station but refuse to use a bush on the side of road because it’s not private.  You drag them back to the car and make them sit on a towel because you just know, and seriously think about dosing them up with Nyquil and filling their mouth with peanut butter.

Finishing a first draft, especially the first draft of that bugbear of literature – The Second Book – is a lot like the road trip.  It’s exhausting, exhilarating, satisfying, terrifying, and there is always that god awful smell from the back seat and the niggling misgivings about the sanity of getting in the car with the thing in the first place.  Then there is that awful question that sends a cold chill and homicidal impulse through every parent: Are we there yet?

I’ve finished this first draft of the second book and yet...have I?  When do we actually stop?  Like the road trip we get out and admire a view feeling all “this-was-so-worth-it”, but then we get back in the car and keep driving until we find another view.  Eventually we have to decide when we can share the view, knowing full well that while you believe you’re looking at the Grand Canyon, the person sharing the view with you might be seeing a pot hole.

Ok.  I think I’ve beaten that road trip metaphor into a coma.

I’m going to give myself a couple of days to read and re-read.  I’m going to criticize myself mercilessly, because that’s what I do to prepare for another’s criticism.  Then I’m going to send it on its way.  I’ll be sitting on a towel waiting on the verdict.