Agent Orange

I have a persistent problem. 

It's something to do with orange.  

I don't consciously like the colour, but every time I turn around, it's there.

I'm quite proud to admit that I was 35 before I owned a saucepan.  

Perhaps that's why furnishing my house has been so tricky. 

 After much consideration, I bought a couch and armchairs, a sideboard and a large table. 

All orange. 

I put a bowl of fruit on the table to decorate it.  

Persimmons. 

 I went to Sydney to escape the orange overload.  

I walked through Bondi.  

This is what I saw.

Sweet Black Lunch

I had a lover.
He would take me to The Mixing Pot.
All the waiters used to look.
He was a bit of a personality.
I went back today, by chance, for lunch.
I sat alone in the courtyard.
Raw beef, ink pasta, black olives.
One glass of champagne.
The waiter looked.
And filled up the water glass.
I had black coffee.
No sweets?
The waiter bought biscuits for my son, and wrapped them at the table.
Nobody knew my lover.
We shook hands.
After lunch I visited my friend.
I was afraid to ask her about him.
I did ask.
She said he was playing chess with her partner. As we spoke.
And that he was married.
It was sweet.

Sydney 1.

• Sally Smith Red Silk Shirt Maker

The Tale of Willy The Masher

Niacinamide, said my doctor, fresh back from the Bio-Balance  conference in Sydney. It stops the brain churning.

You mean obsessing? I asked.

Yes. He smiled.

It was a lightbulb moment.

I found this postcard in the Tallangatta Op Shop yesterday.  I was intially attracted to the boating theme - everything's been coming up nautical lately - but the written message on the back of the card has really captured me.  It launches off in a big bold excited hand and shrinks as the author runs out of space, and possibly confidence, and it goes like this:

Dear. Willie.

I am sending You this P.C. to know how you are getting on as it is a longtime since I saw. you.  I was sorry when I did not see You at the Katamatite Dance the other. night.  I am sending you this to know. if. you will meet me at the Boosey School corner. tomorrow Sunday.  I remain your true love. Guess the name. Guess my name if you can.

The front of the picture has been customised - a swirl over the Y and the title scratched out.

Y is a Yachtsman, you'll see him at Dover becomes Willie The. Masher. You'll. see. him. at. Boosey.

We'll never know if the rendezvous took place, but an analysis of the postcard as a persuasive document reveals a few fatal mistakes.  It also makes me (laughingly) remember all the poetic but slightly disturbing letters and small gifts I used to send to crushes: dessicated orange peel to a polish musician; boxes of maple leaves to a film maker;  customised fridge magnets to the love of my life. Offerings like that have got me where I am today.

I'm older, wiser and single now. If I could give tips to a fellow fancier, I'd suggest the following:

1. Keep it neat - scribbling, spiraling, scratching, shrinking and swelling are spooky.
2. However fondly you mean it, don't insult your hearts desire - back in the day, a "masher" was someone thought to be effete, work shy, idle, and faux-aristocratic. Labeling rarely leads to love. In my unfortunate experience, it leads to bar brawls.
3. Don't try to hide your name, your age or your gender.  It's all obvious really. Isn't it.
4. If he wasn't at the dance and you were at the dance, and he knew you were at the dance, odds are he didn't want to see you.
5. Watch the punctuation.  All those full stops protest a certainty and undercut it at the same time. Too many exclamation marks invoke a sense of panic in any reader!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The postcard has no stamp, no address and no postmark. Maybe it was hand delivered.  I secretly hope it was scrawled and never sent and that the author, spruced up and gorgeous, just happened to be at the same social occasion as Willy The Masher, and that Willy The Masher stopped mashing for a bit and asked the author to dance.

Me? I'm off on another track, thanks to that fibre optic internet connection. The mention of Boosey School could date the postcard sometime between 1887 and 1918. Unless the school was closed, and derelict, and our author was planning a private rendezvous in a quiet spot.  Oh dear.

Clutter Box One and Two

It's been Clutter vs Me for some time now, but we may have come to an amicable agreement.

From the Shake and Bake School of Assemblage, these two works tell stories by kaleidoscope.

23x23x4.5cm

Ribba Frames by Ikea (best suited to sitting on shelves)

AU $50.00 each, delivery by arrangement.

A wave of isolation...

Joe and I had to spend a lot of time alone together before his operation.  After all the trips to Melbourne I've started  wondering about whether a valley 60kms  out of Albury Wodonga is the right place for us, and I've been having fantasies about saving up for a two bedroom mc-apartment in the big smoke.  I'd get more work and inspiration, Joe would have play mates just around the corner...the land of culture, cool-craft, cocktails and coffees beckons.

Isolation has been a key element in the many lives I've led.  Alienation, a sense of separateness, and the need for solitary space are often quoted as pre-requisites for living as a writer. It doesn't really lessen the sneaking sense of betrayal in the writing process, but it's great for perspective and focus. My whole life has been a sequence of journeys, punctuated by repeated returns to isolated places.

Last Wednesday I drove 50 km to a writer's evening at the Laurel Hotel in Mitta Mitta.  I'd never heard of the author, it was a mad rush to get there by 7.00 pm,  and the narrow and winding highway was peppered with potentially lethal wombats.  I took along an Austrian friend who has been in the area for a number of years, and who also wonders how choices in her life have lead her to a place  so untainted by cosmopolitan influences.  We arrived 5 minutes early, to find that Ber Carroll and her minder from the mobile library were the only customers in the joint.  A fire was burning in the dining room, the bar was selling drinks.  We got down to talking.  Three other people arrived.

The questions Ber asked were as interesting as the stories around her life and work.  She reminded me of the importance of staying open and listening - being simultaneously alert to the stories inside us that clamour to be told, and to the stories that flow around us, wherever we are.  Mitta Mitta and its people came alive in the scraps and anecdotes we offered up to her. Various writing projects were discussed, and became more real for the discussion.

I talked about my habit of trying to escape the valley. My last attempt involved a doing a runner to a cattle station 500km north east of Alice Springs.

"That's not an escape," said Ber.  

Up to that moment, I'd never really seen the joke in my great escape from a lonely cottage on a hill in North East Victoria to a 5,00o square km property 500km out of Alice Springs.  Ber had left a small town in Ireland and landed in the great glamour and clamour of Sydney, so perhaps escape for her meant a leap away from isolation.

My escape into the "nothingness" of the outback turned out to be a trip into the heart of many matters - personal, cultural, geographical, historical and mythological.  Today, I made my start at this story, in novel form, as seen through the eyes of a seven year old cowboy.   Joe's in kinder today, so I set up my laptop in the back room at the Mitta Mitta Store.  The owner got talking to me, made a quick phone call, and now I find myself welcomed at Mitta Mitta Primary School.  As I writing this I'm sitting in the Withdrawal Room (!) at one side of the big old schoolroom,  fibre-optically connected to the superhighway and surrounded by the background babble of kids at work. Research just got a whole lot easier, and the wave of isolation seems to have washed me up on a brand new shore.

A Note to Readers

Joe's successful surgery was a massive event, and I am brimming over with the amazing things that have happened over the past month.  We are both well and happy now, but scattered, and I'm not sure I trust myself to post responsibly.  The photographs below communicate a little for the moment.  The rest of the story will emerge over time.  Thank you to everyone who has expressed concern, sent healing wishes and supported us through this experience.

watching sirens

surgery postponed

protection