Rednesday: Say Cheese!

Our camera that has been holidaying at the repair centre in Newcastle has come home to us. Although we have been making do with our phone cameras, we welcome you back with much excitement, dear little camera.

Perhaps because we live in a house with very little storage space, I am a collector of photos of things, rather than the things themselves. But I'd say more so, it is because I am a writer, an observer, that I want to document the incidentals of my life.

I thought that not having my camera for a while might be good for me; that it would force me to be more inside my words and rely less on the images. And maybe it did do that, but I didn't like it.

Breaking with Tradition

I read somewhere recently how odd a thing it is that the laws of our nation's future are created according to a constitution created over 100 years ago.

Walking up the stairs of our local town hall yesterday to get to the boardroom, I really felt the heaviness of that tradition.

In 2005, our local council established the Women’s Honour Roll to pay tribute to women in the Shire whose contribution, courage and example have led to significant social change. For the last 4 years, the award ceremony has been held on March 8, International Women's Day. But this year it was held 2 months late, because the usual March date didn't fit in with Council's schedule.

There was much community uproar that the local event was not held on International Women's Day, a day that has been commemorated since the early 1900s, the world over. And so I volunteered to be on the Honour Roll committee, to ensure that this year's ceremony was held on or close to, International Women's Day.

This is the food that sat in the middle of the boardroom table the committee sat around:

This is the mantlepiece I sat across from as I thought about my own contradictions:

On one hand I couldn't believe how stuffy and outdated the town hall was, while on the other hand, I was only there to uphold a tradition that had been broken.

Rubbed Out

I have a lot of red things - found, bought, stolen, gleaned, acquired, gathered. For some reason, I am avoiding the word collected. Collected to me involves some kind of purpose - one does it actively. I collect my chickens' eggs, I collect Z from school and I am collecting stepmothers to interview.

I used to collect rubbers. I still have them, in a bag in a carton in a box. Since I stopped collecting them I must have opened the box, the carton and the bag maybe half a dozen times.

I picked my niece Indigo up from school yesterday. She has just started collecting rubbers. All day I had the Ghostbusters feeling that I was going to blow her mind with my collection. I couldn't wait!

But when I had finally emptied the bag onto the table where she and Z sat, instead of bits of wowed brains splattered everywhere, there were just two underwhelmed kids, and me, the very very grown up, grown up.

Wagons

It was cold and raining at 9pm last night. PJ and I were in the bath, contemplating whether to go out or not. Wagons were playing in town and we wanted to go see them. It was a great show! We drank champagne and danced and sang and were so glad we made the effort to go.

There's nothing quite like seeing people doing what they're meant to be doing. The band members were all great, but frontman Henry Wagons' performance was inspired.

I turned 35 and a half yesterday and as I sat there in the dark watching the band, I was conscious of this demi-milestone. I listened and thought about listening, and how hard it can sometimes feel, despite the privilege of a loving family and a good education, to listen to yourself and to believe that your tiny little seed will one day flower.

This Red Chair

It was my friend Ollie's birthday yesterday. He is just over three years younger than me. We used to go out many years ago and I feel pretty lucky that we are still in touch. In fact, I am still friendly with nearly all of my ex-boyfriends. They are all great guys but for one reason or another, things didn't work out for us in the romance department.

I had an OMG moment sitting on this chair at the kitchen table today. I was sitting and thinking about my love history and I realised that all my exes have been younger than me and that one of my problems has been that I fell into a pattern of wanting to look after them, not in a supportive partner way but maternally.

I am still taking on that mothering role, but for the first time in my dating history I am doing it in an appropriate way. I have a partner who is my equal and a school age boy I get to mother.

Pickled Tink

I recently read a personal essay by a woman who wrote that she felt the most feminine she ever felt when she was breast feeding her baby. This got me thinking about my own sense of femaleness and when I feel the most feminine I can feel.

My first thought was when I am with PJ and although I like this answer (and proximity), I am striking it from the record because I am looking for an answer that is just to do with myself and not in relation to another.

But maybe that's impossible, because a large part of my feelings about my femaleness feel constructed and composed; learnt and not innate.

I am Meg, and although I am obviously female, I don't live my every day cognisant of my gender. Or maybe I do but it's so ingrained in my self that I'm not conscious of it.

And so, I have started keeping a list of times when I feel conscious of my femaleness. On that list is when I was pickling our homegrown cucumbers two weeks ago. (And yes, I can see the irony of the phallic cucumbers.)

Readers of this blog will know I don't own a single cook book and that I like to roam google's hallways in search of a recipe to follow. But for my cucumbers it was different. My friend Jo lent me some cook books including Stephanie Alexander's book of her mum's recipes, which is where I found the one I based my pickling concoction on. 

I know men who pickle and preserve, but when I did it, I felt connected to a whole history of women, including my dad's mum, Nanna Jo-Jo, who was a fabulous pickler.

Also, because pickling was once, and still is in many parts of the world, an act of preserving produce for out-of-season months and long journeys, there is an element of vitality added to the recipe; the survival and preservation of a people, and along with them, their time-honoured ways.

Definitions of Now

Today over on Brand DNA, Stan Lee posted this photo and wrote about his recent experience at a conference where dozens of people sat and typed on their laptops.

It seems live blogging and twittering are obviously now an accepted part of conferences. Which is probably the conference equivalent of people taking mobile phone photos at concerts... But I can't help thinking that these people are not getting the most out of their conference experience because they're too focused on commenting on or recording what they're seeing.

As a blogger and constant camera carrier who loves to photograph daily details, this is something I struggle with. I want to be present in the moment as Meg Now but I also want to capture what I'm experiencing and encountering for Meg Later. Can a person do both in equal measure? In this ever-evolving digital age do I need to loosen my definition of now? Maybe Marshall McLuhan was right when he wrote "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future."

Meg Meg, Meg Meg

This morning in an email from my mum about my writing she wrote:

You owe it to yourself and to others not to be swayed from your unique path by anyone else's views. It's your Megness that we hunger for from you, not anyone else's world view, however worthy.

When I was 24 I bought a one way ticket to South East Asia. I shaved my head and spent the next few years wandering and undoing and unlearning, and figuring out for myself what is important.

Now I have a family and a mortgage and I can't just up and leave on noisy days when I need to listen to the quiet.

Years ago my folks brought this stethoscope back for me from an overseas trip. Each time my sister K has been pregnant, I have heard my nieces growing under her skin. Sometimes after a big meal I like to lie on the couch and listen to my stomach play its gurgling overture. And on days like today I like to put it on my heart to hear the present tense sound out my name. 

What Makes Me

Image from here.

In Absentia

This is us yesterday morning before all our lovely guests arrived.

I thought I could do it: separate the two halves of my day into happy then sad, but I wasn't able.

I will have other birthdays and other moustache and pancake parties but my grandmother will only ever die this once.

I love birthdays. Growing up in a family of four daughters meant that every year I got this one day all to myself, but yesterday morning at my party, try as I did to feel happy, I couldn't quite pull it off.

My heart was elsewhere.

A Whole Lotta Nothin'

A week ago I bumped into a friend of my sister K's who said that she remembers when we were young how I would sit on the couch scribbling away in my diary, participate in my surrounds, then return to my pages.

This got me thinking about the objectivity a writer has to cultivate in order to remain detached, which is one of the reasons in my 20s I spent so much time in countries where I couldn't speak the language.

For me as a writer, living with other people can compromise my words, so I need to make a conscious prioritisation of my writing time, which PJ understands as he too writes and treasures the quiet.

Maybe it's that I am more of a dreamer than PJ but I tend to do a lot more procrastinating and need, what I heard the writer Cate Kennedy refer to as, Window Time – just staring, eyes glazed over, not looking at anything in particular. It feels like I'm doing nothing but really, this is part of my process, a part that gets sacrificed because if I have limited time to write, hanging out on the couch with my feet up just doesn't feel like the most productive thing I could be doing.

I should take heed of what Freud says in Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming; how an important outcome of daydreaming is to disconnect; not to be confused with escapism as it's the opposite of that.

I say: Here's to more dwelling! Here's to daydreaming! Here's to more thoughts that go nowhere, that don't want destinations, that don't need to be justified or qualified or directed.

Backwards and Forwards

I woke early today and caught the train down to Melbourne. I met two of my sisters for coffee including A who's holidaying from NYC. Oh my beauties! I love them so much.

Afterwards we went to the home where our grandmother, who has Alzheimer's lives. We all sat around her in the courtyard eating cake in honour of her 84th, kissing her soft plump cheeks. She was conscious but doped in a daze.

It is so hard to see her like this; to remind ourselves what she was once like, to see our grandfather nurture her like a baby. But it's even harder to see our mum, now motherless for the most part. Mum graduated from her course last week and said she missed her mother terribly, and wished she could share her life with the mother she once had.

It's so hard not to ache, and at the same time it's so hard to feel entirely present, because we want to remember our grandmother like she was.

On the train on the way home, a mother and young daughter got on and sat in the seats in front of me. When the train started moving the child asked why we were going the wrong way. "We're not going the wrong way," the mother replied. "Our seats are just facing backwards."

This small exchange has stayed with me ever since: the correction of navigation with perspective.

These Are My Mistakes

I have just started reading Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Here's this from page 19:

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. Other people have their own values to live by, and the same holds true with me. These differences give rise to disagreements, and the combination of these disagreements can give rise to even greater misunderstandings. As a result, sometimes people are unfairly criticized. This goes without saying. It's not much fun to be misunderstood or criticized, but rather a painful experience that hurts people deeply.

As I've gotten older, though, I've gradually come to the realization that this kind of pain and hurt is a necessary part of life. If you think about it, it's precisely because people are different from others that they're able to create their own independent selves.

Reading these words makes me want to write publicly about a recent fight I had with one of my sisters.

Some brutal things were said that sliced and pried and beheaded. They were projected in anger but were propelled by love. Families, especially close ones like mine, are perhaps too concerned with each other's happiness, but with the dynamic of four sisters, maybe it just goes with the territory.

I guess this post is part confession, part acceptance and part apology. I said things that were unkind and I wrote hurtful words I can't retract. These are my mistakes and when I've finished analysing them with regret, I will add them to the list of other mistakes I have made. I will look at them from time to time and I will feel sorry, but also OK about the fact that I made them and did them and yelled them and penned them, because they are mine now.

I have learnt that people's definition of honesty can vary hugely and, even though I reeled at some of the things that passed between us, I am thankful for her arrows that reached their target because even though they hurt, they needed to.

Me, Not Me

Image

Proxemics

Golden Words

The other night at knitting group we talked about Alzheimer's because Mum is writing a book about her mum, who has the disease. C, who is knitting gorgeous red cushion covers, said that she read that people with Alzheimer's retain their emotional memory, even when their recall of words and memories of events have faded.

Maybe that's the same with all of us. I am too sensible to listen to dumb-ass pop music but I do and I love it. It takes me back to the days of my childhood when my sisters and I would make up dances and perform them in costume for guests.

One of the joys of being a parent for me is to experience anew so many of the great aspects of my own childhood with Z.

Mum and I spent the majority of the last few days reading and writing. I feel so lucky that I inherited her love of language and literature.

And I feel just as lucky when Z puts his hand over my mouth when we are reading because he wants to sound the words out for himself.

This afternoon we received this in an email from his teacher:

I just wanted to touch base to say that Z is really showing a keen interest in his reading and he is now working on level 2 books. His knowledge of the Golden Words is very good, which is also helping with his writing. We are seeing that he is looking for the sounds in words and is using high frequency words such as 'and' and 'the' etc. This is great to see!

Of Everyday

I had a night in Melbourne then PJ came to meet me yesterday. I spent some great time with my family, but still it was so nice to come home last night, especially to this heart, that PJ had arranged on our bed out of socks:

Today we spent the day embracing the domestic, both inside the house and in the garden. It rained on and off. When it was on we went in, and when it was off, we went out. Our chooks pecked around us. At one point a currawong flew into the chook house to eat the remnants of our breakfast scraps and became disoriented, repeatedly flying into the chicken wire, until PJ shooed it out.

Not that other days feel unreal, but today felt especially real - a beautiful quiet day, living in the country. I was born and bred in Melbourne, but still I feel very unsettled each time I go and then come home. Today was a gentle day of resolutions.

Gustave Flaubert said,“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” My work is not necessarily violent or original, but I agree that there is much to be said for fashioning one's life from uncomplications.

Kidding Around

I am in between contracts and thinking about what projects I am going to work on next.

I wrote a story when I was in grade 5 that our class then made into a movie. (It was called Key to the Unknown Planet.) I knew then that I wanted to be a writer.

In 2000, Bruce Willis made a film called The Kid, in which he as an 8 year-old visits himself as an adult. In one scene, when the boy sees what his older self has, he exclaims, overjoyed, "We've got a dog!"

Sometimes I feel that I live my grown-up life as a salute to the dreams I had as a kid.

I look in the mirror and think, "We've got red hair!"

My sister K, (who wanted to be a ballerina when she was young) sent me a link to the folio of Yeondoo Jung, who, for one of his projects, honours childhood imaginings by bringing them to life.

People Like Us

Last August PJ and I went down to Tassie to stay with my folks. At the end of our trip, we were packing our things before heading to Launceston where we were going to hire a car for a few days. My dad called PJ into his office and showed him a piece of paper. It was a subscription to Dissent magazine, a gift from him and mum for PJ's birthday. (Later PJ joked that he thought my dad was giving him the bill for our stay.)

Today after work I headed to the post office where this latest issue arrived in our PO box. Oh the joy of seeing PJ's name, not just on the address label but on the table of contents and page 20, where his article Lalgambook: the Djadjawurrung and Coca-Cola Amatil is featured.

Also in this issue is an interesting article by the social policy researcher, Robert Salter called, Moving beyond the limits to solidarity: a social investment approach. In it he writes:

... new forms of communication make it easier for us to build communities of interest in place of the locality-based communities we once relied on. So we are more able to select with whom we associate, and more often that not these are people like us.

My whole adult life I have been scouring the globe for a community of like-minded people. I blog surf, read books, magazines and the paper, I meet people and watch movies in the hope of learning new things and finding kindred spirits. But what if I am wrong? Maybe to really learn new things I should be seeking people who are nothing like me, whose opinions are entirely different from my own.

The Stand In

It was a beautiful winter's day today, though I stayed indoors for most of it. It is hard to remain hidden when you have bright red hair, so I used the excuse of having a lot of work to do, which I do, and stayed inside to do it.

Everybody needs to not be found or seen some days and today I had a day like that. I feel like I'm cocooning and will emerge from this headspace afresh, though into what has not yet been revealed to me.

A few weeks ago, PJ read a chapter from his new book at Collected Works. The reading was for the launch of a website that features some of his work. He is sometimes a nervous public speaker and on this particular night, decided to include his nervousness into his performance. He asked for a member of the audience to join him. J-Dog, my sister E's boyfriend, who is an actor, volunteered.

He was asked to stand in front of everyone and read silently to himself a chapter from PJ's book. Taking the spotlight off himself, PJ sat amongst the audience and confidently read the same chapter aloud.

I wish I could have done that today. 

When I ventured outside to get a coffee this morning, I walked down a series of stairs and I remember thinking to myself, if I were a stuntwoman, I would throw myself down stairs all the time in public, and then pick myself up at the end and carry on as usual, just for the fun of it.

Wouldn't that be great? Though thinking about it now, perhaps my little fantasy reveals more about my wish for a stand in, than for my desire to live recklessly.