No Magic in Procrastination

“That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.” Joan Didion

I am not twenty eight and I’m not Joan Didion, but yes, I evade and procrastinate. I am the master. Apparently this can happen when you start the serious writing course (TSWC); when you have but a few short months to produce a manuscript; when the course you have thought about for two years hasn’t unleashed the creative monster as you’d expected. The beast continues to enjoy an extended hibernation deep within your soul. It crawls out every now and then, takes a look around, but decides not to gallop down your arms the way it did for Salley Vickers when she sat down to write Miss Garnet’s Angel. I sat not five metres from the elegant and erudite Ms Vickers a few years ago when she demonstrated what happened when her beast stirred. It stretched, opened its eyes to Vickers's creative possibilities and took off. It scampered down her writing arm, burrowed through her pen hand and emerged onto the pages. Lordie, it was literary magic, the thing that happened to Ms Vickers when she penned Miss Garnet’s Angel.

Rainy Days, Never Mondays

Too many tedious, rainy weekends: it's messing with my head. I’ve seen a few films. I’ve drunk too much coffee. I’ve caught up with all the news and read a few novels. But mostly I’ve cleaned. The linen cupboard is pristine. Even the pillow cases have been bleached. The car is spotless and the garage has been swept clean of mud and leaves. I've composted tired summer plants and potted some sweet scented winter bulbs.

With potting mix still under the finger nails, I looked around last Sunday evening and felt a tiny jolt of pride in my newly ordered, sparkling house. But anxious thoughts intruded. Perhaps the big wet had triggered an obsessive compulsive disorder. Perhaps nonstop cleaning indicated I needed to get out more, even if it meant getting soaked.

Grey Matters

On a stunning autumn morning I parked the car and followed a procession of stylish people to Carriageworks in Redfern. We bypassed the pots of herbs and ignored the aroma of Columbian coffee and freshly baked bread. Chirpy volunteers with bright smiles stood by the door. They seemed immune to the early hour and the icy breeze that whipped around the growers market outside.

"Welcome to TEDx Sydney 2012," said anyone with a clipboard.

At Your Heels!

Sydney Morning Herald, April 30th 2012

We have a shoe thief. She is shameless and persistent.

We used to leave our shoes on a sheltered verandah, far away from the street. We preferred quiet entries and wanted to postpone the wear and tear on timber floors. It worked for 10 years, living this way.

It takes a brave person to open the rickety gate, walk down a floodlit path and repeatedly steal every pair of size eight women's shoes lying on that verandah. Given three people in the house share a shoe size, our thief was spoilt for choice during 2010.

Dorothy

I find myself drawn to vintage bathing suits and the stories of the women who filled them. Bathing suits hide as much as they reveal. Like a woman's body, the fabric becomes threadbare and worn, yet she is still strong and imposing. Both the bathing suit and the female form continue to be a rich source of inspiration to explore memory, nostalgia and the transitional phases of womanhood.

The pretty postcard flier lay snail-nibbled and slimy in the garden bed under the letterbox. Josie meant to throw it in the trash, but something about the words drew her in and serendipity took over. They shared a love of nostalgia. They had worn vintage clothes for decades. One had been collecting vintage swimming costumes. The other had been painting them. When Josie walked into the exhibition space, she saw the artist before she was pointed out. She wore an emerald green party frock. Josie’s was blue.