Greengrocer wisdom
“What are you using the pink peppercorns for?”
“It’s a Maggie Beer recipe.”
Pause.
“There’ll be a lot of verjuice then.”
Pause.
“Yep.”
Gardening
Gardening. I like the idea of it. I get into it sporadically, once every couple of years. I like to be able to say: Today I am gardening! It means I am not writing or worrying. It means I won’t have to go for a run because I will have done exercise. It means I am outside and communing with nature and making things grow. And let’s face it, as a novelty activity, pulling out weeds is fun.
But then it gets serious and you realise you are going to have to mulch and buy sand and soil and weed killer and manure and dig beds and raise things and plant and wait and buy more things and read gardening blogs and it all becomes a bit like sewing or fixing a car, it is all in a language I don’t understand and it makes me feel small and inadequate and somewhat retarded in my learning.
But nonetheless, for a few hours, every couple of years, it is a noble and satisfying thing to say: Today I am gardening!
This is how it is today.
christmas moon
Lunar eclipse
promises a blood red moon tonight
best viewed from Williamstown beach
It will be visible for roughly one hour
from 9pm
A dark bauble in the sky
a reason to lie on the ground and look up
(and later shake the sand from your clothes before getting in the car
and later still find itchy remnants of it all through your hair and bed)
and do nothing else for one whole hour
this Christmas time
Phone box mystery
Overheard as I walked past a phone box in West Footscray. The speaker, a neat man with grey hair and a beard and an American accent. He was holding the phone to his ear and speaking loudly. Declaratively:
He told me in 2003.
He wasn't optimistic.
That was the last time ...
Why a phone box? Why West Footscray? Who was 'He' and what has happened in the last 7 years? It may have been about something as simple as real estate. Or the beginning of a Cold Case episode. Or a Paul Auster novel.
I walked back each day at the same time for a few days. But nothing. I never saw him again.
explosions of roses
Spring rain has leaked into early summer. Have you noticed how many roses there are? Wedding dress white ones and monte carlo pink ones and lemon coconut icing yellow ones and red wine faded lipstick ones and flaming tea stained orange ones and bruised vovo ones and I wasn’t yellow enough so I started bleeding red at the edges ones.
They are spilling and tumbling and throwing and cascading and falling. They are thick with themselves and sick with themselves and dying on their branches and one single one is plucked and left on a concrete gate post and their petals are shed with abandon and the streets of Footscray look like a Paris florist where they toss petals with artistry to try and make you buy something but here it’s all for free they are so cheap and common in every household garden, that much joy and that much beauty so brazen in its ordinary everywhereness.
Out for a run their scent assails me, blown on the wind, seeping up from the ground, hurling itself between cracks in front fences, like so many drunk women swaying, waiting to be picked up or plucked, admired, treasured, taken away.
At home, a single white rose clutched in my hand.
Put it in a glass of water, place it on the kitchen table.
It is still unfolding.
I know it will wilt and die.
But not yet.
Anti-Expression-Ism
I was recently reading publisher guidelines (for a particular Development Opportunity) about what they are looking for when it comes to writing. Clear, distinct voice - yes. Strong ideas - of course. And then came across the directive from a particular publisher stating that writing for publication is about communication, not self-expression.
What the?
On the one hand, I get it. They don't want confessional writing, cathartic outpourings, personal journals dressed up as narrative.
But really.
Why so scared of self-expression? When executed along with talent and skill isn't that actually what makes inspiring art, great works of literature, lasting pop songs, poems to move and uplift and provoke?
Communication, good lord, sounds like something we must do effectively to put across our point. Like something in a marketing or business writing manual. It is so even handed, so egalitarian, so bland.
I don't want to 'communicate' with my reader or audience. And I don't want to be 'communicated' with. I want to be moved, angered, exalted, banged over the head, reduced to tears or laughter, twisted into a new way of seeing things, or delivered to a delightful place of reverie and contemplation.
And also.
Blanket statements about what writing for publication is or is not seems like a slippery slope, especially for a publisher presumably on the look out for fresh words, exciting writing, unexpected stories and ways of telling them.
If writing for publication is only about communication, and not self-expression, The Metamorphosis would have been a treatise on identity, Angels in America would have been an account of the spread of HIV/AIDS among the gay population of America in the 1990s, The Bell Jar would have been titled Study of a woman experiencing mental illness.
And the world would be a much poorer, more drab and less beautiful place.
All those in favour of self-expression as a perfectly natural part of the artistic and creative process? Say 'I'!
First night
The light on the trees.
Next door TV aerial glows pink.
We open the door but the air is no different out from in.
Fan blows a course through sleepless morning hours.
The first warm night of summer.
touch
his nose looks like an after thought
a beautiful one
mast head or Mercedes car bonnet decoration
something square in its elegance
that – ridiculously – she wants to hold
it is not sexual
can’t imagine it growing in her palm
like Pinocchio
if the skin on
your fingers gives age away
she is very old today
this noble shape
cups lightly
into her hand
brings the same peace as
smooth flat stones
she used to skip across ponds
knowing now – as then
she will have to let go soon
leave her hand hovering empty mid air
but not yet
not while he is sleeping
unaware of her touch
and just how much
she needs to hang on
This poem published in Issue 8 of Page Seventeen, launched on Saturday 13th November, packed full of stories and poetry, that you can buy here.
Seeing things
My eyes limit me
I am looking for a new way
to see
in this calm place
I am inside
different heads
can rub up
against new skin
probe strange wounds
dip into a
pool of memories
not mine
the ceiling is low
but I don’t bang
my head
it smells
of work
in here
things made
by hand
I like this
can I follow
their lead?
sculpt thoughts
carve words
into a new shape
I wrote this poem as part of my ongoing Cafe Poet in Residency at c3 Contemporary Art Space, at the Abbotsford Convent. It's currently part of an exhibition titled: Ecosystem, an exploration of the Abbotsford Convent Community.
What happened Jasmine?
Kate tells me that olfactory memory is the strongest and links most directly to vivid memories from the past.
I'm not sure how this can explain the fact that the smell of Jasmine makes me nervous.
But I am curious about the possibilities.
A spring time flurry from the past.
Blossom that left me with butterflies.