The View from Elsewhere

Return to Cardigans' Island

Before I go any further, I should say that the pictyurs accompanying this post have nothing to do with its contents...they are of SuperHelen, a fine nugget of a woman, on the old enduro trail in Alice.  I took them on my new Fuji finepix camera, which I bought because it doesn't have an external zoom, and the last two cameras I bought with an external zoom literally fell apart mountainbiking.  So far, I have been a little disappointed by the quality of its photos, but I didn't think these were too bad.

Unfortunately, my model is about to depart to a Third World Country to take up Emergency Engineering, so these may be the last you see of her, before I indeed head off for other shores, including those of the Apple or Cardigans Isle.

one last friday mogblog for the road...

This writing thing is really getting on my nerves...

Otherwise, there's true love in the cowpat...

The Show

more from the cowpat

This is what I woke up to this morning...if only I'd quarantined Otty with my original purchase, then let Lulu in once he'd gotten the hang of it, I could have saved $9.99.

Update: He's no patsy...after defending the back courtyard from a Strange Skinny Dirty White Feline Intruder, our vanquishing hero returned to oust Lulu from her cowpat on the couch ... mind you, things are now pretty much as they were in the previous post.

I'm now looking on the situation in terms of the upstairs cowpat and the downstairs cowpat, tho I suspect the cats have a much more feudal outlook on things (Jessie's on my bed, in case you were wondering).

update from the cowpat

I took my mother's advice and bought Otty his own variegated cowpat, which I put on his spot on his couch when I got home.  Otty promptly went and sat on the other couch, so I put the cowpat beside him and tried to coax him inside.  When he refused all enticements, I picked him up and put him inside the said cowpat and tried to persuade him it was a better place after all.  He purred nervously then hopped out once my back was turned.

So...perhaps the problem isn't Lulu at all but Otty.  Maybe he's like gentlemen of a certain generation, wary of donning 'lairy shirts' or a mauve cardigan or cartoon boxer shorts. Perhaps he shows good taste in not wanting to sit inside something that looks like a giant humbug. Perhaps he's wise to prefer bedding in neutral tones.

After all these years, I still  can never tell the mind of a cat.

bring back Friday mog-blogging

Over the past week, I have had many Meaningful Thoughts which could have been transubstantiated into Meaningful Blogposts.  However, none of this happened due to (a) work and (b) a sudden rash of application-writing.  I have just completed another application, this time applying for a few months' grace, as I see it, to complete my manuscript about the Springs without having to work part-time.  (What bliss that would be -- imagine having the weekends back!) 

It's a funny thing about application writing...I find with applying for jobs or resources or whatever that I virtually have to psyche myself up into the part, as it were, in order to get the momentum to write the application. It also requires a certain spaciousness of mind to write something thorough, which means putting aside time rather than leaving it till the last minute or at least putting aside enough time just before the last minute, which is usually more my style. But it's impossible to keep up that sort of fervour (and probably not a little obsessive), so after all the focussed excitement I just forget about it, or have lots of negative, Eeyore-type thoughts if I do remember, until there's news.  I can't think of any more applications to write except for one due at the end of August, and that one can wait till the artists colony.  Phew!  It does seem there's more application-type things about in the middle and the end of the years.

Anyway, in the absence of posting Meaningful Thoughts, I thought I'd post something Meaningless, to wit, a cat-blog post.  The other day, when I went to Kmart, I was accosted by the sight of some glorious pet beds on sale, fashioned like a large cowpat with a stripey band round the rim and a paw-print in the middle for the princely sum of $9.99. I thought this might be the solution to (a) too much cat fur on the sofa and (b)the lack of heating during the winter night for two of my felines: i.e. Otty and Lulu could curl up together in the middle of one.

So I purchased one and took it home and put it on the said sofa, and within four seconds, Lulu was inside it.  She has only been out to eat since then, and no one, not even Otty, has been allowed in with her.  Otty has instead been sleeping upstairs on the computer chair, which has a kind of warm sheepskin thing to protect it from cat fur.

I asked my mother what to do about the cat sleeping arrangements dilemma (Otty's exile to the computer chair, etc, now that he's no longer able to sleep with his beloved) and she said to buy Otty his own variegated cowpat, but perhaps in a different colour.  (It doesn't seem quite right when there's space for two in one.)  I told Sebastiene, and she said, 'Lulu is a bitch' (she has the hots for Otty).  Any further suggestions, etc, are welcome.

In other news, I bought two beanies at the Festival of the Beanie, with vetting from Sally (even better than a mirror).  I have blogged so regularly about the Fest, I don't think I can bring myself to do it again.  Last year, I didn't buy a beanie at all; I was trying to economise.  But I've made up for it this year.  There's kind of the more formal beanie and the slightly more cool beanie, depending on the occasion, one's mood, etc.  Very useful for bad hair days.  The buying of beanies itself at the Fest is often a somewhat ferocious process, a bit like the Myers Christmas sales, as all of Alice Springs converges on a horseshoe of tables around the edge of a room in the local Arts Centre, rifling through piles of beanies, looking for one...or two...or thre...or four...etc that is/are truly moi.  The only thing that's worse is the Desert Mob marketplace when we do the same thing with cheap Aboriginal art.  (Anyway, perhaps I'll capture this all in my book...)

update from the balcony

I'm sitting on my balcony, looking out at the MacDonnell ranges, wearing shorts and a T-shirt.  I've just been on a mountainbike ride, so this may account for a raised body temperature.  According to weatherzone, it's 19 C at 6.00 pm.  It could be spring, tho it's mid-winter and often freezing first thing in the morning.

There's been a lull in the blogging because I've been going non-stop over the past couple of weekends writing applications for various things and also an article for Mr Tiley's rag: look over here.  This article represents the last commitment to my American MFA: I wrote half of it for one part of my course, then put it on ice till the Coronial findings came out.  I wrote the final version with tears streaming down my cheeks a couple of weeks ago.  It was partly a reflection of the subject matter, partly a reflection of more egoistic concerns about my writing, and whether I was really managing to convey the emotional dimension of the matter through my prose.  Anyway, Mr Tiley and co liked it, which goes to show that your emotions -- or your interpretation of them (I'm always a little confused about the mind/emotion distinction) -- are rarely a true reflection of how things are.

One thing about this trying-to-be-a-writer gig: much time is spent in the writing of applications, to buy time, resources and professional development.  You think you're going to have all this lovely time to write, only to find you spend it writing a grant application to buy yourself a window of opportunity at some other time.  Sometimes I wonder if the thing I'm really good at doing after all is writing applications.  Anyway, I sent off another application today and felt good about it; even if I don't get what I've applied for, it helped me clarify my thoughts.  It also helped me finish the half-baked treatment I started writing on holidays at Broome.  At the time, I wondered about the value of committing to such a project, if I was doing something truly weird: now I know.  There's always a reason for doing something. As the refrain of a Helen Garner short story goes: nothing is ever lost.

sickland

So here we are on the couch yet again, trying to type around a large performative tortoiseshell...I have been stricken with a dreaded lurgy for over a week now, which sounds so similar to what PC describes that I've been wondering if we have the same thing.  Every time you think 'it must over now', a new batch of symptoms appears. There was a visit to the GP in which I mooted swine flu, only to be told that there were (a) no known cases in Alice Springs and (b) I wouldn't be tested in Melbourne on the basis of my symptoms.  Next day I felt vindicated by my concerns when Ross River Park school was closed down after a teacher tested positive.

I find I go through several phases in sickland: the first is enjoying an excuse for a break for 2 days, hanging out on the couch watching DVDs and drinking huge quantities of lemsip; the second (if it gets that far) runs for a period of a week, and involves being frustrated by the social and physical limitations illness imposes; the third (if we get that far) is of enjoying the retreat from life and the daily round illness provides.  I've been (seriously) through these three phases when I had a DVT, and also last year when I had a flu that wouldn't go away (my banana lounge period).

There's been a lot of retreat and solitude lately in my life, but I don't imagine it will go on any longer than the winter, esp since I'm going to America (yay!) in August.  Now that I feel more like sitting up with a laptop, it has been good in terms of going more deeply into the script, as I'm feeling less obliged to run around than I normally do (which is a lot, socially and physically).

I have also watched a hell of a lot of romcoms, and let me tell you: there's a lot of bad ones out there. I suspect I'm not really writing a romcom proper (just using the structure), as the insights are too dark, the tone is too wistful and melancholic (mind you, Woody Allen often does something similar, tho that's rather a big comparison to draw) in my humble script.  But I'm with Billy Mernit of Writing the Romantic Comedy when he says that the better romcoms actually say something about human relations; many fall flat because they have nothing to add. To me, the two stand-out romcoms of the recent era (well, last two decades) are When Harry Met Sally and Four Weddings, but really only Nora Ephron has anything remotely like a social commentary going (actually, I'd give the thumbs up to The Devil Wears Prada and Baby Mama was unexpectedly good).  Richard Curtis is admirable because of his humorous dialogue and clever use of structure, and he has some great minor characters, but I find his leads very nothing -- which might be in part a reflection on the people who play them (Hugh Grant, Andie McDowell, Julia Roberts, etc).  I thought Love Actually was a real low point (Christmas froth actually), but he's redeemed himself with the recent pirate radio station film.

In other small screen news: I have also developed an increasing fascination in Madmen on SBS.  I found it a bit slow-moving even stilted to begin with, and indeed, I still find it rather like watching an aquarium.  I found Big Love rather a similar experience, although the second series got pretty pacey.  What's interesting to me is Madmen's milieu: that pre-feminist, feminine mystique era that my mother was a part of, and in which women never got further than being a secretary or a teacher, then had to leave once they got married.   I talked about this with a friend who's a year older than me, and one of the youngest in a large Catholic family, and has developed a similar fascination with Madmen.  There's that reminder: this is where we came from; this where things could have stayed.  I don't know if later generations -- younger X's and Y's -- have a similar sense of mixed nostalgia, having been born into a post-second wave feminist era.  I'm also interested in the character of Peggy, said to be based on Helen Gurley Brown: I've often thought that women's magazine culture had more more impact than mainstream feminism on 'emancipating' women (even if in watered down version), something that I proposed writing a post-doc on in the Australian context (but sigh; that wasn't to be.  Instead I ended up being the native title officer at ATSIC Victoria).

P.S. It's been a bad week for comedy, what with Sacha Baron Cohen and the Chaser team in hot water.  Seriously, I was surprised the ABC mgt let that Chaser skit go to air -- clearly, asking for trouble -- yet again, it seems a belatedly poor managerial gesture for them to ban the Chasers for two weeks after the event (as well as creating a slump in winter telly-watching on Weds night). Anyway, I'm sure someone has said something more evolved on LP or some such place about this...

s+d -- the response

I'm here on the couch, drinking lemsip, surrounded by cats with more interest than they should have in vegetable soup, reading/watching romcoms, wondering if I can justify buying a new toaster (one with deco colours) and thinking about what an unusual reality we white (and I imagine some black) expats inhabit in Alice.

I'm reminded of the unusual reality factor after reading comments on Laura's excellent blogpost about S+D.  I was going to comment, but then my thoughts grew too long so I decided to write my own blogpost instead (don't you hate it when someone says that?)

I'm scared of committing some of my thoughts into the ether, because of how they might sound: defensive, hypercritical, and so on.  I'm really quite surprised and overwhelmed by the response to S+D, and I imagine the film-makers are as well.  I thought it would be a boutique film that only a handful of people saw -- those who like to keep up with left-wing political issues. I am wary of ra-ra leftie stuff in general: liking something just because it has Aboriginal or migrant themes, confusing politics with aesthetics, preaching to the converted, and so forth.  I also thought some of the film's nuances might be too enigmatic for a broader audience.   I'm quite amazed by the emotionality of the response to the film from people outside Alice: it suggests to me that the film exposed dimensions of Aboriginal experience that people were not aware of or hadn't fathomed (and perhaps can't be adequately conveyed through other forms, such as investigative journalism and opinion piece-writing).  It's a considerable achievement for Thornton to have communicated so powerfully across so many different cultural barriers.

By contrast, the response in Alice at the screening was, as far as I can tell, a lot more muted, a lot more considered even. I don't know, for example, of anyone who cried. The crowd was strangely quiet for 2000 people at the end; the mood was sombre.  Which might look like indifference, or the conviction of guilty consciences.  But I think the reality is more complex than that.  People seemed to be processing, which continued over the next couple of days in conversations I heard around town.  Interestingly, I heard far more aesthetic evaluations of the film from people in the NT than I've heard in any of the national film reviews I've read, even directly after the screening. For example, people made comparisons with Ivan Sen's Beneath Clouds, which is to my mind a more developed and sophisticated film in some ways.

on the beach

In case you think I'm going to write something pleasant and meaningful about the beach and relaxation...it's not in my nature.

These first two pictures are from the flight over Kununurra, which was almost as good as the one I did years ago over Purnululu/the Bungle Bungles.

When I arrived in Broome, it took me a while to get into a rhythm. Yoga went right out the window; there wasn't any question of me rising early to do the salute to the sun or whatever.  Instead, I read for a couple of hours, and demolished most of my reading matter pretty quickly.  I hired a bike, and began riding to Cable Beach every morning and every evening for a swim...there's nothing quite like a morning dip in the ocean.  Lap-swimming in a pool certainly doesn't come close.

By the last couple of days, I'd established a definite routine of swim, read and eat breakfast, work for several hours, then back to the beach, dinner, DVD/movie, etc. I didn't get as much done as I hoped I would: I always have wildly ambitious ideas of what I'm going to accomplish, especially by myself.  I wrote on the deck of my hotel, which skirts the edge of a mangrove swamp, g + t or soda water at hand.  That might not sound very salubrious, but the swamp had that unearthly orange sand coupled with blue sea look that chacterises the WA coast-line, and which you can see remotely in the photo below.

I had hoped to write a whole new treatment and all that: I got to the end of the second act.  But the time was well-spent in the sense that it made me see that certain things wouldn't work.  Usually when you're writing in short bursts, as I am, you say (well, I do), oh, I'll fix that up later or that'll work when I get round to doing so-and-so. This also leads to a lot of tonic shifts and underdeveloped scenes and character motivations...so it's a problem. I had enough time to look at some of the meta-questions to do with the script and say things like, that's just not really part of the genre and it's going to be an uncomfortable fit even as a hybrid.  And is the protagonist really too passive, compared to the antagonist, and so forth.  When does she act and what's driving her to take action, etc.

For me, part of the problem with the short document writing you're meant to do before attempting the script is that it all seems so speculative and non-creative (i.e. expositional writing).  I tend to think the proof is in the pudding and that you don't know if things will really work until you write them.  I also find it difficult to explore characters without writing about them in a creative mode, so I started writing some scenes, just to get them talking to each other...which was good until I had thoughts like: haven't they already said something similar to this, and, hmmm, there's a lot of repetition here: like why is this character always dragging the other one up a hill of some sort, and so forth.

So it was kind of productive, kind of not in the way that 'writing' often is...I think I came away with a better overall picture of the shape of the third draft and its genre.  I think I could pitch it better than I have been. I would say that the whole experience of writing away from home was better in the sense that it lacked regular distractions.  It would be greatly improved by the presence of people to eat dinner with in the evening...I'm hoping the American colony will provide that.

Here are some evening pictures from that transcendent  beach -- Cable beach.  Broome was much more touristed than it was when I was there previously, fleetingly in late October.  I didn't mind this, as there were many more people around, and it lost that creepy vibe it can have when it's full of miners.  I was surprised by how soon the sun set and by how much cooler the night air was...signs that there's definitely some sort of winter on the make in Broome.

There was a real sense of festivity on Cable Beach in the evening, with so many people down there to watch the sunset, and trains of camels decked with bike lights making their way back to wherever they bed down for the night.

eternal homework*

I’m on the plane to Darwin, about to set out on another adventure.  Last year when I was doing my running around Australia-on-behalf-of-infr*structure thing, I spent about thirty-six hours in Broome.  Thirty-six hours wasn’t enough (mind you, I’ve been there about five times, but not for about four years), so I decided that I would go back on frequent flyer points once I had finished my MFA to celebrate…and to write.

I’m interested to find out whether being in another place without the familiar distractions (felines, undone domestic tasks, the cycling club newsletter, etc) will yield better writing results than just hanging round at home for the same period.  I’m hoping to go ‘into the zone’ with my script and nut out the treatment for the third draft.  I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that writing the treatment before the script is probably a good idea, and that I’m more likely to troubleshoot problems in advance that way.  The treatment (if you’re not sure) is a 15-20 document that outlines the script’s story in detail.  I’ve always written them after the event in the past, with the result that things usually fall apart in the third act, as they do if you’re not sure where they’re headed.  But it’s possible to write scenes that you’re busting to write in advance and store them on index cards or blu-tak them to a whiteboard, as I’ve found.  A good treatment has been described to me as one that reads like a short story, reflecting the tone and movement of the script.  I’m not so sure about the short story analogy; I think the best treatments I’ve read help you see the film unfold.  

winter cat-blogging

 

You may not think that it gets cold in central Australia, but it does...so much so that I've found the winter doonah in the alcove where it's stored and made a cocoon for myself on some of these 5 C mornings we've been having lately.

the writing or the riding life

Female engineer at work: Psst!  I'm not meant to ask you this but what do you want for your leaving present?  Something to do with writing?

Me (mishearing): I don't know. Maybe an Allen key or a new bikelight set.  I'm always breaking or losing them.

Engineer: Not riding; something to do with writing.

Me: What, like a new USB key?

Engineer: Isn't writing more romantic than that?

Me: No.  Not at all.

*

One of the 'experts' around here who is not an engineer has just said that she thinks it's good she's not one, as they tend to be 'overly detailed, boxed in and distrustful of anything that's human.' Ha!  I used to say something similar about lawyers when they complained about the 'difficulty of working with non-lawyers' -- i.e. me -- 'well, it has to be good to have someone round here with communication skills who can think laterally'.

*

Over the Mayday weekend I was faced with a cruel choice: either miss out on a 500 km bike ride to Kings Canyon or a local writers festival. (For those not in the know, Mayday is one in a whole series of excuses for long weekends in the NT.)

Actually, I was quite happy to forgo the prospect of writers en masse in preference to a long, welt-causing, pawpaw-ointment infused bikeride, but as I was a member of a certain committee, I felt I had to at least make an appearance at the writers festival.  And what a fine relaxed occasion it turned out to be at the Olive Pink Gardens...one of the few writers' festivals not to make the mistake of overpanelling and holding too many cross-sessions (chaired by obnoxious people who think they've been asked to speak themselves).  A special highlight for me was the launch of my former students' anthology (no photos, unfortunately, as this computer won't accept mobile phone downloads), along with yet another Ptilotus Press publication of writing from the Centre. 

Other memorable moments: I asked the ASA dude if 2,000 cat blogposts would qualify me for a New Works award, to which he said a surprising and resounding 'no'. Jennifer Byrne launched the Diamante Anchor, penned (or tapped) by my cyber-nemesis, Jennifer Mills. Jenjen and I have a curious relationship:  it's like that bit in The Folk of the Faraway Tree where Connie and I think Moonface pretend each other don't exist.

Here is the Samson & Delilah review, for those who don't subscribe to Mr Tiley's cyber-rag.

There were further rivals for attention over the long weekend: a doof at Ross River and a camping trip with old friends from Melbourne and Canberra.  Things have a habit of happening all at once in Alice Springs.  I didn't make it to Ross River; here are some photos from our bivouac.

 
 

the job, the hobby and/or the toyboy

Following on from comments on the last post, I thought I would whine some more about teh nature of work.  I found an excerpt from an interview with Alain de Botty on the net, (being to scabrous to buy him in hardback, esp since the text is accompanied by so many pictures).

His line seems to be that work has become overly associated with one's identity or self-fulfilment -- i.e. careerism.  When work doesn't deliver on this, people become disgruntled and dissatisfied with their jobs.  I call this a sense of vocation, which in my experience particularly seems to infect anything associated with political and cultural organisations (i.e they bleed you dry).   However, I can't say that there haven't been periods in my life where I haven't attached a sense of vocation to my work, and that if I was teaching again, I'd be strongly attempted to do so.

The vocation thing is also a two-way street: your employers behave as though your job is your calling in life, therefore they should be able to keep on asking you to perform more and more and more.  I said to several people over the weekend at the local writers festival, 'employers want your soul', and something snapped in their eyes and they said, 'yes, they do.'  There seems to be an assumption that you're your job even with a part-time job.

Anyway, here's de Botty on work:

LEIGH SALES: Well, and as you say and write in your book, this attitude towards work, that it does define our identities and it's meant to be meaningful, is a recently - is a fairly recent development.

ALAIN DE BOTTON: Yes, absolutely, and it's got interesting parallels with love. You know, up until the middle of the 18th century the idea that you would marry somebody that you loved was a completely odd idea. You would marry someone for practical reasons, to hand down the family farm or whatever.

Then along comes this idea that you can marry up necessity with pleasure. So you can do the dynastic stuff and you can actually love somebody. And the same thing goes on with work. You know, in the olden days work was just for money, suddenly work becomes for fulfilment.

And those two old staples of aristocratic life, the hobby and mistress, go out of the window. So suddenly having a hobby seems like something you wouldn't do and having a mistress, again, becomes very pejorative. You're supposed to put all your eggs into your marriage and all your eggs into your working life. Now, depending on what statistics you read, something of like 80 to 90 per cent of both married people and working people have, occasionally, very serious doubts about what they're doing. So if you imagine it, what we've got in front of us is an ideal of a good life, which lets down something like 80 per cent of us for periods of life. So it's a beautiful idea, but it's a very dangerous one too.

Yes, well, bring on the toyboy, the mistress and the hobby I say, although it's never been an easy gig for women -- I seem to remember Virginia Woolf struggling with it.  My problem is that I'm trying to go back to the old paradigm, when work was just for money and exalt my hobby to a vocation (i.e. a grown up version of the student life).  It's difficult trying to do this as an 'emerging' writer, because people don't see enough evidence to take your claims of being a writer and need for time and space to write seriously.

Anyway, only two days to go now. There are some things I will miss about my current job, such as: being invited to assist at science and engineering school events (not that I ever did); having astronomical and ornithological phenomena pointed out to me in exhaustive and exhausting detail (not that I ever listened); staff lunches at the Watertank Cafe (the cafe bit can be re-enacted).

I just don't want to be 'interested', that's all: no more 'interesting work you can get your teeth into', it's always a cipher for too many other agendas.  (Let's hope this consultancy gig works out and you stop whining -- Ed.)

job creep

So...someone came a-knocking to my door and offered me some part-time consultancy work, doing something entirely boring but small canvas, comprehensible and not involving mediating arguments about 8 mm or 10 mm boreheads.

And...what was offered was highly flexible, working from home, with laptop supplied, and paid at almost twice the current rate.

So...I leapt at it, consultancy work being the holy grail, as far as I'm concerned.  I had a couple of quibbles like, 'It is more editing; is this a good idea because of the similar head-space to writing it requires?' (tho at least I'll understand what it's about this time), and 'Will I get bored and cabin-feverish, spending so much time at home?' (tho can always go up the street to work in cafe).

And so...I put in my notice at my current job, suggested alternative arrangements, weathered minor angsty managerial storm for a couple of days.  Things settled down, as they always do, once people get used to the idea, which is followed by your existence being forgotten in six weeks' time, after all the clamour about you being 'indispensable to the project'. 

And then...I had other happy thoughts like, now I might be able to afford a side-trip to Mormonsville when I go to the States and buy a MacBook (to support possible future home business endeavours because current 5 yo laptop is driving me nuts).

back back back

I have been back from Melbourne for almost a week now, but with nairy a moment to blog, as deadlines at work, with the MFA, etc, have reached feverpitch.  It's been one hectic start to the year, that's all I can say.  I hope it calms down soon (is it the year of the ox or something -- an industrious beast?)

Much of Ms Laura's nupshalls and the lush-us blogmeet at the Standard have been already  been chronicled in other blogs.  Since I'm coming so late to the party, I won't be giving an account here, except to say that it was lovely and highly memorable -- perhaps the most auspicious and memorable blogmeets to date in my experience.  (My computer is also too virus-ridden for me to download phonephotos at the moment.)

Belinda has tagged me with the 'find out what you need' meme, so I might do that here. I'm sure anyone else who wants to indulge in this is welcome.  The directions are: go to Google and type your name in the search window followed by the word 'needs'. Copy and paste the first ten search results that come up.

1. Eleanor needs Facebook.

2. Eleanor needs to calm the hell down.

3. Eleanor needs to contact her therapist.

4. Eleanor needs a savior and protector and only Alexander will do ...

5. Eleanor needs a home.

6. Eleanor needs to re-write a statement.

7. Eleanor need for speed carbon.

8. Eleanor needs to get out.

9. Eleanor's medical financial needs have been met...with God's blessing and your help, we can get the treatment Eleanor needs so badly.

10. Eleanor updated Eleanor's needs.

Some of these are scarily accurate: I won't say which ones, but not numbers 1 or 7.

whan that Aprille

The countdown has started and it is now less than a week until Miss Laura's nupshalls.  Meanwhile I have busied myself wondering just what the weather in Melbourne will be like.  There has been much consulting of weatherzone which has revealed, interestingly (yawn! -- Ed.) that although the baseline minimum temp in Alice is often quite similar to that in Melbourne (i.e. about 17 ), our max tends to level-peg at 38 C whereas theirs is all over the shop. 

April is in fact one of my most favourite months in Melbourne, tho no doubt there is room for wild inconsistencies of temperature, all within a day.  My speculations about next weekend's weather have taken the form of a philosophical meditation, not unlike the um, yeah, well, much overplayed Derridean binarisms thing:

• leather or denim jacket?
• long or short sleeves?
• half or full-length tights?
• cap or beanie? Etc.

Then there's the question of whether you take three of each or one long and four short, two short and three long...you see my quandary?  Or perhaps the half the bloody wardrobe. I have some idea that a tunic might be a good idea (not the one in the previous post, obv), as you can wear either short or long with it. Definitely an umbrella; that much is certain.

someone who sews

It is a truth universally acknowledged (or it needs to be) that anyone who sews -- by that I mean Professionally Sews with a capital 'S' -- is mad.  I take comfort in this, as a non-sewer.  I've been saved this crazyness by going to an agricultural school that practised EEO by making girls do woodwork, metalwork and farm mechanics (Ladettology 101) and having a mad mother who refused to teach her daughters how to sew and cook (what was the point? they were obv hopeless at the domestic arts as she was, etc, etc).

You might remember that two years back, I had an encounter with the store biddies of Ezysew.  Well, Ezysew is no more, and has in fact been replaced by a thrift shop maybe eighteen months ago.  While I was teaching at Bumbledore, I bought a length of material screenprinted by students with an interesting naif design (also the subject of a blog post).  Realising that Ezysew was no more, I searched for a sew-er in the local yellow pages.  It transpired that there was one sew-er left in town, the chief rig from Ezysew.  When I went round to her place on the New  Eastside, I found that the entire contents of Ezysew had been relocated into her loungeroom -- a scary site/sight.

Queen Ezysew was quietly spoken and a tad reclusive, I suspected.  She pointed out that the panels of screenprinting on the material were too long for a skirt, even on me: it would be a shame to break them up.  Perhaps a kaftan? (hmmm) She'd give it some thought.  I could leave it with her but she had a lot of wedding dresses to make, especially since it was December.

Not wanting to be too pushy, I left things for a year before calling.  Queen EzySew had vague memories of my length of material; no, she hadn't done anything with it (not even a kaftan outline -- phew!). I went round and picked the material up.  She hid behind the screen door, saying in hushed tones that 'she'd been ill' as she thrust my material in its plastic bag towards me.  Not only that, but she was leaving town soon.

I forgot about the material for a while, then earlier this year I went to Polkadot to buy a button or elastic or something.  While I was there, it suddenly struck me that they might know Someone Who Sews in Alice.  And they did.  Someone Who Sews had just moved to town a few months' ago.

When I rang the Someone Who Sews in Alice, it turned out that she'd broken her wrist and couldn't sew for six weeks. I rang her in the fullness of time, and she invited me into her house.  Fortunately the entire contents of Ezysew were not in any of her rooms, which looked remarkably bright and spare for a Sewing Person (don't ask me why I associate gloom with sewing).

Anyway, Someone Who Sews was frenetically chatty and told me what A Wonderful Find it had been, coming to Alice: she was working part-time to support her love of sewing and she had been Inundated With Requests.  I guess she would be, as the Only Person in Town Who Can Officially Sew.  I said that I was a writer, working part-time to support my love of writing, but um yes, I've hardly been inundated with requests.

review from the past

The last few days I have resiled (how exciting to be able to use the word 'resile')  from writing a blogpost as I have had a virus and it might be (a) too taxing to write one and (b) I might write something even more negative and bile-filled than usual. 

Fortunately, the worst part of the virus occurred on two work days, so I was able to take sick leave and not feel bad about it (as opposed to missing out on two writing days).  I'm pretty sure I've blogged about the joys of being sick before, but to re-cap: there's a certain misleading pleasure in being sick insofar as one might think one might actually be on rec leave, but it's not: one is still sick, after all.  I always feel there's so much I could have done on a sick day, but rarely enjoy what I do as much as I would, well, if I was on a holiday.

Here's some of what I managed to do on my sickbed:

• Read Philip Roth's Indignation and finish Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth
• Watch Baby Mama (actually, not bad)
• Watch second season of The Young Ones
• Watch Unbearable Lightness of Being*
• Watch Ladette to Lady, Bridezillas, The Farmer Wants a Wife
  
• Do sneaky revisions on MFA MS (sneaky in terms of getting out laptop and possibly prolonging sickbed agony)
• Worry that I might not be suffering from any old virus but possibly the symptoms of ME, MS, etc.

* I feel that the Unbearable Lightness of Being needs some explanation...I've subscribing to Quickflix (or is it Netflix?) since the beginning of this year, which has turned out to be a very good thing as DVD stores in these parts rarely stock anything made prior to 1998. (I must also say that Quickflix's turnaround time is impressive, esp given my location).  They ask you to pick 20 movies to start your queue.  I did, very quickly, and somehow included the ULB amongst these, tho I was curious to see how it held up, what, maybe 20 years later after I first saw it.

When I first saw the ULB, I re-named it The Unbearable Longness of Being, and seeing it arrive in two discs rather than one, like all the other films I've hired, did little to dispel this illusion.  Indeed, it was quite handy, as I was able to pause between discs one and two and watch The Farmer Wants a Wife.  It goes without saying that this created a very interesting juxtaposition.  No one says anything like: 'To you, everything is lightness' or 'I can smell s*x in your hair' on The Farmer Wants a Wife.  (If you think that's bad, then the dialogue on TFWW is excruciating.) No one does anything with bowler hats and mirrors, either, tho they do do things with bullwhips.

Something I really find hard to cope with is the idea that anyone might fall in love on a reality TV show, and not only that, but at first sight, as at least a couple of the contestants claim in every series.  And then there's the contrast what people say in their commentaries face-to-face with the camera then how they behave with the contestant of their dreams: Farmer: 'Yeah, I'm really falling for her.  I think she might be the one.  I'm hoping there'll be some special magic tonight.'  Cut to: Romantic dinner.  Couple sit eating in silence. Hopeful chick: 'Salmon? Asparagus? You really picked things right.' Farmer: 'Yeah, I was hoping you'd like it.'

I guess that's true to life: the gap between fantasy and reality.  There's probably a lot of subtext there.  How much would you want to say on a hot date on reality TV (or does that beg the question?)  But it made me think, maybe I'm not having such a boring life after all.  Perhaps I'm not such a bad conversationalist, either. 

keeping faith

There been a small influx of writerliness into my life in Alice, which should continue when the yearly NT writers festival is hosted here in early May.  This has been slightly surprising but nice.

About a week ago, I met up with S, my former tutor from the Cardigans' workshop in Tasmania, who was passing through Alice.  I was feeling a bit down about the writing 'journey', as is probably evident from the previous post, particularly in regard to the script.  I wasn't sure if I should can it and focus on the MFA MS (pretty much my plan for the next couple of months, in any case) or try and get up a short film or write another couple of features...There seems to be some idea in film that you should always have another script in your back pocket in case people don't like the one you show them, and that the third feature is the one that will get made, and so forth.

I was getting all sorts of competing advice (incl from non-writers and people who know nothing about film, as usual). I like to be focused rather than puddling around with process and 'being-on-a-journey-ness', so I felt threatened and wondered if it was all a big huge waste of time. I had written the second draft of my script, and found myself staring and staring at it, not quite knowing what to do but thinking that moving a few scenes round wouldn't solve its problems. I was keen to meet with S, because he's someone with enough insight into film-writing to tell you what it is you need to know.

S told me not to give up on the current script; that it was an original idea about a unique place.  He said that typically, the first draft is about essence, the second draft gets bogged down in structure but the third draft is when people usually 'get' it; that it's the marriage of both structure and essence. S reminded me that drama is about emotions...like wot Aristotle said, catharsis.  It's something I find vaguely confronting, because there's a lot of stuff I'd rather not share myself.  But having said I'm someone who's more interested in writing dialogue and character, I need to reconcile myself with the idea that the investigation of human relations is what those domains are about (over-intellectualised and all as that sounds).  Something I like about film-writing is its metaphysical nature: the potential marriage of structure and essence, intellect and emotion.

When we met, I showed S a four-page outline of the current draft of my script (it always amazes me how these guys can diagnose problems with with script just from reading a synopsis, but that's another story). S said that both my narratives were 'out of balance', and the ending was incredibly nihilistic and a problem in the present economic climate. He thinks we haven't felt the full impact of the current economic downturn in Australia but that in two years' time, we will have and people will be wanting to see depression-era, feel-good movies with heroes triumphing over adversity: look at Slumdog Millionaire. At least one of the narratives needed to be 'in-balance' (i.e. have a 'comedic' rather than 'tragic' resolution).

I said I had a problem with the idea that the protagonist had to learn something by the end of the film; in real life, most people don't learn anything, they keep on repeating their mistakes. S said, 'Yes, that's why they go to the movies: so they can see films about people who learn from their mistakes.'

So, note to self, make sure protagonist learns something, have at least one narrative end...hopefully perhaps rather than happily. I repeated all this to Angus, and he said, 'Gosh! So what he's basically saying is Baz Luhrmann released Australia two years too early??' I don't think S was suggesting that I write a piece of fluff (nor do I think Australia is that), but I'm now wondering if people would like to know about a mythical place in the middle of the outback where life is still fresh and young and battlers (albeit lesbian and Aboriginal ones) can triumph over adversity and find love. That there is a place for everyone in Australia...which is kind of Baz's message, except here it could be even more a re-instantiation of the leftie-humanist dream, the personal is political, the local is global, blah, blah...?