those creative types

I’ve been reading Edith Wharton, and it’s rather depressing.  Everything is rather something (or’uther).  Not to be too flippant – I am sure the characters in Glimpses of the Moon really felt every bit as miserable and desperate as they sounded, so distant from reality in their artificial world of pre-World War One romantic intrigue and chinchilla cloaks.  And to be sure, there was something about the depth of their distress at being parted from their true love (and therefore, from a true life) which inspired a familiar anxiety in me.

How does one engage in everyday work to support the artistic life (trying not to be as tongue in cheek as that sounds and failing miserably, I see Wharton’s sad, sarcastic tone has infected me more than I would have liked!)  Surely there is a better solution than that of the two lead characters of Glimpses, who become hangers-on of rich people and wonder at themselves for being so hopeless as to not be able to do an honest day’s job, yet also can’t see a way out.  That is, until the very end of the book, the last five pages, when they find each other again and commit to loving each other in poverty.  Well, for at least one turn of the moon, anyhow.  It’s all rather bleak.

I suppose birth control would have helped the heroine.  And to my mind, a good kick up the bottom would have done the hero a world of good.

Is it really that simple?  Can the life of the mind be as easy to come by as I ruthlessly suggest?

To my mind (made obstinate by opposition), for thousands of people: yes.  A little dose of application and a lot of determination; the good fortune of being middle-class Australian, getting a good education and not having to fight for food: these are all things not to squander.  If you have permission from your loved ones to create and, for a while, put money second (though not, entirely, out of the picture!) then take it.  There’s nothing that makes me so impatient as hearing of someone in our affluent society, surrounded by supportive people and opportunities to work in ways that will support their writing (if not their Faberge egg habit) who wants to write but can’t seem to find the time.

I am being uncharitable, and these words will come back to bite me, I know.  It’s just that blasted Wharton I’m mad at.  She spoke too honestly and too close to the bone about the inertia and laziness that can stultify.  But then, so can a want of finance.  And then, so can fear.  Being on the cusp of leaving my job to cobble together freelancing and focus more on writing, you could say that this is on my mind.

I might read something less doleful next.  Who would have thought the story of a couple of wastrel New York socialites from the late 1800s could strike from such a distance?  Bloody classics. Thoroughly untrustworthy ways to spend your leisure time.  Just as likely as a modern read to bite you on the bottom with an home truth, of the kind you thought you had cleverly avoided by immersion in descriptions of clothes and carriages.  But look out: what goes on inside those c’s can pack a punch.

It’s a week for opening windows and letting the rain gust in.  You’ll always have more towels; but how often do you get the chance to let pure, cool water from the air moisten your lips and curl your hair becomingly over a steaming cup of tea, brewed to meet its maker so thrillingly present in the room?  By Tuesday night, you will have sated yourself on the wonders of dark grey and wetness; by Wednesday you will hardly remember what rain smells like.  But Thursday and Friday you don’t need to dry yourself out; you’ll find fresh attentions from the heavens, watching your steps and deciding to adorn them with puddles for pudding and slides for laughter.  And what else?  Your heart will naturally follow your folly, past careworn analysis and into a final, blessed sleep to join the fairies once more with their darling dream-world behind your shuttered eyes, free at last in the wormhole of your mind.

Rach sanding

My husband and I have started what appears to be a life-long project: renovating our house.  To get us up and running, we invited a bunch of friends over for two weekends in January to have fun with power tools.  Our object: to paint the doors and kitchen, fix the back deck and clear the side of the house of its erstwhile chicken coop (sadly, no photos of this activity, but it’s a beautiful corner of cleared ground now, thanks to Dorani).  

This blog post is a tribute to their loyal, stout hearts and even stouter painting, sanding and hammering muscles.  Thanks you guys.

And a piece of advice to all would-be renovators: don’t take my advice.  I don’t know what the hell I am talking about.

To see some more amusing photos of our DIY attempts and people wearing white dust masks as hats, visit our flickr site.

Hale and well met, my fellow journeywomen and men of the sometimes paved, sometimes rubbly road to all our favourite things.  This year will see you starting ebullient, smelling of good, sweet caramel (not the cheap sort), your self-sure smile lacing your determined jawline with hope.  You know you will be perfect; nothing more could be truer than your own ability to live this life the way you always meant to. By February, you will look into the creek that chortles next to your path and see your rippled reflection casting shy nods of approbation, at you, at you and no other; in March you will stumble on the rocky landfall that lies in your way, but then congratulate yourself on the well-made shoes you didn’t skimp on back in January.  April, May and June will see the clouds hover but, seeing the glint on your sun-bleached hair from months of being allied with the light, they will whisper and relent; July, August and September will see nothing less than the burgeoning spring in your step, your spirit and the wildflowers that blossom along your trim, paved trail to the top of the mountain from sheer joy at having such a companion.  October is your month of baked goods, where you indulge yourself in the delight of sharing your good fortune of biscuits and brownies with others, who will be gladdened by your passage through their lives and morning tea plates.  November the peak is in sight, and who would have thought it was so far still to go!  But do not despair – you have had a great year, a fine year, a year of imagination and hope and justice and delight – and December and a thousand more footsteps, and you will be there. Where?  You know: there, where you were at the very beginning – on your road, the right road, the good road skipping with all your favourite things.

Happy New Year, my old friend!

I have a misty brain today.  have been looking for random insights, but short of telling you how rubbish the flu of pigs was (my excuse for not blogging these past few weeks), I find my brain a rather dull, confused place to live.

So I will tell you all about my new Kindle.

Note: this post was not sponsored by Amazon!  So I won’t do any links to their website.  But you can just google Kindle and see all about it yourself.

I got a Kindle for Christmas.  It’s an electronic book, and you can cut and paste stuff from the books you buy on it, and take notes, and get instant definitions.  I now know that limpid actually means clear – since I was eight years old and reading about Anne of Green Gables’ limpid grey eyes, I have thought it meant sort of soft, and a bit droopy.  You can also listen to music on it while you read, or convert the text to speech.  And you can transfer your own files to it (Word, PDFs, that sort of thing).

Sadly, the catalogue is limited to out of copyright works and bestsellers, which are a bit too brash for my sensibilities.  But you can buy the complete works of Jane Austen for about $5, and new books for about $12.   And you can transfer the files to any of your own devices.  The way you buy books is, the Kindle has a direct wireless connection to the Amazon Kindle store.  I guess you could also buy e-books from other sellers, and free e-books from places like Project Gutenberg, but I haven’t experimented with that yet.

There are some rivals coming out in the next year or so – the Apple Tablet for about $1,000, which will have a touchscreen and colour, but will be bigger and more than three times as expensive.  I’ve heard the Sony e-book is a bit glarey – one of the nice things about the Amazon Kindle is that the screen uses electronic ink technology, like an etch-a-sketch on 21st century steroids.  It actually uses ink, and places it electronically where the letters on the screen should be.  And the screen is not reflective, to look as much as possible like a book.

Some of you might be outraged.  Not by the idea of an electronic book reader (which is really an obvious thing to move to next – they are essentially iPods for book lovers); but that I already have my Christmas present.  But my lovely husband decided I needed it for my long commute to Sydney for work (three hours a day, three days a week) as soon as possible, so I have already got it.  For Christmas day, he tells me he has bought me a “real” book as something to unwrap.  How very quaint.

A week of playful indecision.  Forget pronouns: cut straight to the chase.  You like me, or you don’t.  You want to be somewhere for Christmas, or not.  You would rather be wearing perfume and bells than socks and sensible shoes; or you find greatest peace of mind in an apron and trousers and no-nonsense,non-slip slippers (there’s a funny-ism for you).  Whatever the call to action is, by Wednesday, you may have made up your mind and not acted on it.  By Friday, a change in the wind, a stubbornness born of wild indignation at the expectations of others, and you might discover yourself on a plane to Morocco this Yuletide season, your family and friends happier for you than you thought that they would be.

And what a week it is!  Friends from out of town will blow you away with how much they care about you, and there you were, wondering if anyone still remembered your hopeful face.  Chocolate coated tulips are just the beginning of their imaginative ways of telling you that you are loved.  By Wednesday, in your very own choose-your-own-adventure life, you can decide to either chew them and spit out the leaves, grumbling disconsolately about the freshness of flowers these days; or you can pluck the petals and throw them to the wind for others in greater need of grace to find them.  Up to you, really.  But I know you; I know your worth.  Gardening may not be your strong point, but if loaves and fishes can feed five thousand, then one small petal of love can doubtless swing an army from hatred to kindness, and all it will take is a flick of your generous wrist.

I was just thinking…

If we don’t have to remember anything any more, because we can just google it, how much space does that free up in our brains for more important, patent-producing work?  Like, I don’t know: nutting out all the calculations required to make a chaotic event predictable; or working out the gravitational force required to make the Universe stop expanding (actually, someone very smart, who doesn’t need google for anything except movie times, has probably already done that)?

You know the theories – we only use a measly tiny fraction of our brain as it is.  But now that we don’t have to remember useless facts, like the year Napoleon  was exiled to Elba (1814, and I spelt his name wrong the first time), or the distance to the nearest Solar system with an Earth-like planet (4.37 light years, although there is still nothing definitive), then let’s imagine what we might be able to turn our minds to?  Not only us, but just think of the space saved in kids’ brains who have not even started the long, boring road of fact memorising; who will eventually only be tested on a far more useful power in the wireless world, of how quickly they can google an answer rather than laboriously and limitedly recall it?

The interweb is clearly the latest in a long list of how technology is supposed to have given us more leisure time (the washing machine beats banging clothes on rocks).  But rather than give us more leisure time, it’s given us the leisure brain.

That’s right: I don’t think we’ll be using our additional brain capacity to find a cure for cancer.  But we will get to use it to do a bit more mental lazing around.  You know – day-dreaming, gossiping, rumour-mongering, and all round, time-doodling.  

I have this picture in my own leisure brain, of a line of grey matter balls, reclining on li-lo’s, along the rim of a pool, idly staring at the grub on the inside of their beach umbrella, and wondering if someone is going to come and ask them if they want another pina colada, or of they are going to have to roll over to get it themselves.  

I’m not criticising.  I think it’s a nice thing.  I wish my brain would turn its newfound additional leg-room to good, like harbouring the latest great ideas for eco-friendly, space-saving devices.  But it won’t.  And nor will yours, so there’s no point in looking like that.  Here, have another pina colada.  I used Coco Lopez coconut cream (drinksmixer.com), which will turn it from mediocre to awesome.

I just had a realisation.  An epiphany?  No, just a realisation.  That will suffice as the noun of the moment.

Do you remember the first time you said to yourself, “I don’t actually like the [insert popular thing that everyone is supposed to like here]“?

For me, I remember the moment when I realised, “I don’t even like Jason Priestley.  Or Matt Perry.  His face is too thin.”  I was thirteen.  I made sure to only realise this in my head – too many of my friends had posters of Jason or Matt in their bedrooms for it to be politically safe for me to declare it outright.  Still, it was a liberating moment: I could admit, at least to myself, in the privacy of my Beverley Hills 90210 free bedroom, that I just didn’t agree with what I was supposed to.

From then, it was a liberating series of moments:  ”I don’t like Coca Cola, or anything else fizzy, except maybe Sars.  And Bundy ginger beer.”  ”Hey, I know I’m still a kid, but I don’t actually like lollies, so I’m not even going to pretend for your sake that that bribery is going to work.”  ”I don’t want to eat Hungry Jack’s hamburgers for dinner every Friday.  I’d much prefer a home-cooked meal.”  (I’m still ashamed of this last one, which I actually said to my mum, who, after seven kids, should have been allowed to have Fridays off cooking. But I was just starting to learn how to take her very own disapproving frown and, by God, turn it on her; and not just on her, but the rest of the required to-be-liked list.)

It turned into a right avalanche by the time I was eighteen, and not liking popular things became cool.  Other things that joined the “I just don’t like it” list: anything pink, Christian Slater, and Klimt postcards; anything in the Top 40 list, dresses that might actually be flattering, and red meat.

But it was not until tonight that I realised there is a whole other world of things not to like that I didn’t know was allowed: beauty.

I like beauty, don’t get me wrong.  But I guess, like anybody, there are certain people I think are hot with three t’s, and others I don’t find that much of a turn on.  But, like many women, I always went along with the deal.  Thin, tall, big boobs if possible but not essential, blonde if possible (but also not essential), pouty.  That’s beautiful.  Short, curvy, freckles, glasses – that’s just not.

Which is weird, right?  For years, I have been training as a practised adept at not liking things, or fiercely adoring others.  I have made major life choices not to work a regular job, but to pursue writing, because I like it.  I am happy to go against the grain when it comes to capsicum (no), bacon (definitely no), soy milk (yes!) and Norah Jones (yes, OK?  Yes!).  

But for just as many years, I have blindly “ceded my power” (yes, that’s really what I have been doing, I have to say it) to the mainstream, taking it for granted that my opinion of what constitutes beautiful must, simply, be wrong.

Tonight, my husband and I were talking about people we know, and he mentioned a girl in a law office he once worked in, whom everyone (bar him) had voted the most “sexy” because she was blonde.  My husband tends not to have mainstream tastes – hence the noun and possessive pronoun, “my husband”.

That reminded me of a story of my own.  A couple of years ago, I was working with a tall, thin, blonde colleague whom I had to accompany to interviews with various high-flying CEOs around Australia.  She was a great girl and we had heaps of fun.  But I had never thought about her in terms of beauty.  She was just top company.

Until we started meeting the CEOs.  They were men in their forties and fifties, who did things like invite her for trips on their private yachts (with their families, so it was not totally sleazy), whilst totally ignoring me standing next to her.  She seemed to take it all in her stride, and we had a very frank conversation after a few days over a few beers, when she said, without a trace of arrogance, but simply because it was true, “Basically, I have the body that most women in America want right now” (she was from the US).  I looked at her, and it took me a while to understand what she was saying.  She was right, of course, but she just wasn’t what I aspired to look like (luckily, because it would have taken a gene transplant) – of course she was attractive, but not to me.  Just, it seemed, to everyone else on the planet.

I dismissed my own opinion though, because when it comes to female beauty, I always assumed, without even thinking about it, that I was wrong.  The female beauty myths were that hard wired into my brain.  

Until tonight, when I realised, recounting this story to my husband, that maybe I was not, immediately, wrong.  If he could have his own tastes in women, then why couldn’t I?  Maybe, just like lollies, soft drink, and Jason Priestley, I could make a valid preference call and it was OK.  I was not wrong, and others were not right.  I was merely saying, and sticking to, what I genuinely liked.

It’s embarrassing to say so, but I have made it into my thirties without embracing this fundamental truism of feminism – beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I mean, I always knew that, right?  And I always said it.  And of course, I know what I like, and what I think is attractive in men and women.  But until now, I never really thought my view could be just as equal to anyone else’s (like the magazine editor of Cosmo.  How could I be as right as her?)  I just always assumed that my tastes (and my own personal look) did not come into the same room as the definition of beautiful.  

Humbly, I have to admit that hanging out with my fella has started to make me see otherwise.  If he thinks his tastes are valid, then why not mine?  I’ve seen men behave irrationally towards women I have had no zing for at all.  And I have been attracted to men and women who, in the usual way, would not be considered three t’s hot.  

From now on, I guess I’m trying to say…I’m right too.  Beauty is just like every other decision I have made in my life: I have a right to it.

In which I just say no….I think.  Yes, that’s right.  No.

It’s been some time since I updated you on Mr Middleton developments.  This is probably because I have been hesitant, not wanting to disappoint, and not wanting to jinx future efforts.

This is what happened after the last post, at which point, Hoang and I were about to tackle the world of publishers.

The major publisher who was interested, was not interested in a stand-alone, illustrated book. They liked my writing, and they liked the drawings, but it was just not their mainstream fare.  They said they would like to see a collection of short stories from me.  

As my husband likes to tell people, I turned them down.  It wasn’t really like that: there was no firm offer, just their interest.  Still – why would I walk away from a major publisher?  Having them interested at all was a coup.  I told myself this, about one hundred and twelve times.

But the bottom line was, my heart was not in writing more short stories, not right now.  I was very motivated to write a long-form story which I am working on now; and I was motivated to see Mr Middleton published with pictures; but I was not remotely motivated to do a short story collection.  And I couldn’t force myself to do it.  To do so would be to betray the process; and as every writer knows, to betray the process is to betray yourself.

So….my husband and I got busy with postage, packing tape and brown paper.  We sent the package of illustrations,story and synopsis, all lovingly presented in a brown box wrapped in string, to ten publishers who seemed to have published like-books in the past.

And we waited.

To be continued.