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July 12, 2006
UP AND ABOUT IN QUEENSLAND, BEING MADE A FUSS OF
The adventure starts with the taxi driver in Melbourne. Hal is with me since we've been given two return flights and accomodation. He's wondering if can slip in a 'partners' speech. Me, I am too busy with my new contact lenses. I've been meaning to try them out before D-day, been busy working on the novel, and know that I will regret this decision.
When I get up to read my story, knees trembling, vision impaired, and put on the reading glasses that go with these lenses, the text begins to swim. The thing perched on my nose becomes a microscope and the paper looks like a petri dish, convexed at the edges. But I am getting ahead of myself. The taxi driver. The first of the natural storytelling taxi drivers I will meet.
His grandfather was a political activist and fled Mussolini and came to Melbourne. This is the only place that would take 'wogs' and therefore we are a cultural melting pot, cosmopolitan, special. We agree with him, tell him our news. He says that he has taken four authors to the airport in his taxi-driving life, an after-retirement. His driving is a little erratic, over the white median strip. The heating blasts up in my face.
Hal had to get up early to make sure we could get away. Yesterday was production day at the Vegie Curry Man kitchens and this morning was cakes and muesli. The cab driver used to sell muesli bars. He had a big customer base. He talks about racial prejudices. How there are bad and good Lebanese. They were difficult to sell to but, he says proudly, he knew how. All he had to say was Joe-around-the-corner bought from him. Hal gets a customer call on the mobile and we fall silent for a minute.
It is cold in Melbourne. I am rugged up in a feather jacket; planning to stay a few extra weeks with a friend who lives a few hour north of the Gold Coast, to test out my theory that it is easier to write when I am warm. I am planning on a writing spree after the awards ceremonies are over.
I haven't travelled in yonks and when we are airborne, I check out the clouds as if selecting fleece for export. I can tell the difference between clouds. It isn't long before we are starving. The day before has been a full production day and everyone has been up early to make getting away possible. Owning a food manufacturing company means we have become allergic to junk. Hal gets a white bread sandwich on the plane and turns it over in his hands saying that he has not had one of these in thirty years. Everyone else seems to be getting into the grog. I also come to know that it does not take long to get to Coolangata airport in Queensland.
We stare at the blue sky, walk to the beach and turn around to get ready for the awards dinner. The architecture here is not what I expected. It looks temporary. The place is totally geared towards holidaymakers. Service industry. And then we are there and I meet so many amazing people. MTC Cronin who is the poetry judge will become a friend. We are both to discover a shared love of prose poems. There is Frank Moorhouse, fiction judge and Win Shubert who is the force behind the prize. Nigel Krauth who is the chairman of the judging panel. And many more. All the cats are out to literary party.
Some things I could have done better: Prepped a proper thank-you when I get up to talk ( told only as I am eating at the awards dinner that I am up in 5 to read my story--haven't got it, I bleat, but a comp copy without any red pen is handed to me -- which was surprising because I kept wanting to edit as I read).
As I said before, I am using my new contact lenses with new reading glasses which makes for a fish bowl effect. I lean on the lectern to hold myself up and allow myself to swim in a relaxed fashion throught the words.
Nathan Shepardson, the poetry winner, is a treat. I love the poem he reads. His father is a painter, well-known around here, and when Win Shubert who is the 'mother' of the Josephine Ulrick literature award, invites me to her gallery, I make every effort to go visit before heading north. And get a look at Nathan's dad's paintings. All of which is incredibly wow!
Here's a link to an brief mention of the evening on a Griffith Uni news webpage.
The day before we left the Gold Coast and the afternoon of a second reading that had been organized at Griffith's university we (Frank Moorhouse and Inez Baranay, Hal and I) went to the 77th story of the Q building and saw the coastline for miles. I fantasized about what it would be like to have a writing studio up there.
I am going to be staying on a couple of weeks with my friend Kristina to write in the warmth. We get a lift up to Margie's place in Melanie. After Hal leaves to get back (Market Day on Saturday at St Andrews), I come back in the second week and the view from their their house-that-Jack-built is still amazing. We gaze over to the dam and down towards a hidden valley and up to a distant roll of mountains. Their place is designed by an award-winning brother. Tall ceilings, recycled materials, wood and glass, paintings on the wall. A Drysdale. He's a ceramicist, Margie explains as if that explains everything and tells me how she came to own it, a story full of falling in love and laybys and guilty secrets till she finally had to own up to needing the dollars to pay it off. After the night of the awards on the Gold Coast, each day has been one of a kind.
I am staying with Kristina in Eumundi and from the house there is a vast lawn that stretches from one lot of palm trees to the stand behind which the forest rises, impenetrable. I have never been to Queensland before. I am sold.
Two weeks later and I am sitting in the sun. I have dragged a wicker chair onto a vast bowl of a lawn, moving it when the shadows of the palm trees shift around. Kristina is transcribing a phone conference so it is easier for me to be out of the house and I am not complaining. Something has shifted for me in this month. I've had a realization about holding creative tension and not letting it dissipate. So you could say the flow is flowing. Not that I am going to have the two chapters under my belt, only one, and this will need to be transcribed onto the computer, edited as well in the process. But my direction is clearer. And I'm having a marvellous time chatting with Kristina who is a storyteller (fodder for novel no. 3 when it happens). No. 3 has a couple of chapters already written and quite a few other pieces to be worked on and slotted in. Realist fiction unlike my current project.
After I've finished writing, and had a bowl of stewed fruit because I don't want to lunch yet, I sit in the bedroom because the sun has discovered it and read the Harpers I brought with me. I've already finished the Mary Gaitskill story which is why I bought the mag. Then I discover an excerpt from a book by Christian Bok. It was recommended to me by one of the writers in a collaborative project on the Zoetrope site. I am loving it and decide to put Bok on my must-have list.
There is another author I am reading, prolific, recommended but her writing is very blah. I am going to keep on reading. Maybe [Edit: I didn't] Not my cup of tea.
When I get back to Melbourne, I've got a to-do list. I've been collecting cards, especially at the awards night. I figured out at last that I'd seen Margie (MTC Cronin's) writing around. She's got a book coming out from Ravenna Press. But the books of poetry that I got from her have dissappeared. Another to-do -- find the poetry books.
When I left Melbourne, I planned to do a lot of writing on my novel, post-Awards Night and ended up with a quarter of my projected outcome. However, the two weeks have allowed me to come up with some conceptual views for the novel. Kristina is a natural story-teller and I did a lot of listening for novel 3.
In general, I am recovering and getting settled back in Melbourne ( I got bit by a bug in Qld and the wound hasn't got quite healed yet -- made my skin swell on the flight back and I started to cough white froth). This trial was balanced by some wonderful emails in my Inbox telling me that a few of my stories had been accepted for publication.
There were other challenges; my writing space had been appropriated by the biz. I did lots of mantras and deep breathing. As a result, I've found that what I have ended up with is my old writing space back. The whole of the office, in exchange for part of the large living room into which the biz office has moved. We are getting bigger rapidly with one customer and unless we have more customers, infrastructure expense can't be justified.
In conclusion: I want this experience repeated for the rest of my life and I don't mind it getting bigger and better. Quite apart from a few cases of foot-in-mouth disease which I am sure will get ironed out if I have more chances to interact socially with other writers!
Posted by girija at July 12, 2006 07:46 PM