A fantastic example of this writing advice is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.
Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement. – The Boston Globe
Kurt Vonnegut’s absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut’s) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Don’t let the ease of reading fool you – Vonnegut’s isn’t a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”
Slaughterhouse-Five is not only Vonnegut’s most powerful book, it is also as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author’s experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut’s other works, but the book’s basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy – and humor. – Goodreads
Have a read of my micro-fiction, ‘Undulations’, first published in Quadrant Magazine.
Undulations:
So we’re sitting in Melbourne in a vegan restaurant reminiscing about our school days spent mucking-up in the back row and Jane (her hair still red, short and frizzy, like childhood) remembers daring me to ask our fourth-grade Geography teacher how to spell ‘undulations’. What? “Because I wanted to write her a message,” Jane says. “An unsigned message saying, ‘The way you run your hands over your boobs to demonstrate undulations is disgusting,’ but didn’t know how to spell it. So I told you that if you were my friend, you’d ask her. You know how she always said to speak up if we couldn’t spell something? For some reason she wrote the word down on a piece of paper, rather than on the blackboard. Maybe she thought you couldn’t see properly from our eyrie. So you got back to your desk and passed it to me under the chair. I wrote in my best handwriting, ‘Your demonstrations of undulations are gross,’ blotted it carefully, and placed it furtively on her table after the recess bell had cleared the room. When we filed in after lunch, I saw her open it up.” Jane taps me on the arm enthusiastically. “What happened then?” I say. “Was she angry? Did she think it was me? Did I get punished?” How forgetful was I? Jane had mastered the art of getting the ink from the inkwell to the pen nib to the paper—no ugly blotches—her cursive as good as a professional engraver’s. Even after all this time, she still prefers a fountain pen and has a proclivity for setting wrongs right. “She threw the chalk in the bin, reached for her cardigan and draped it over her shoulders,” Jane says, grinning. “Yes, that’s what happened. And she didn’t demonstrate undulating landscapes on herself or on any of us ever again.”
Have a read of my prose poem, ‘The Backpack” first published in Quadrant Magazine. Hope you enjoy it.
The Backpack:
What can a man who meets you at the station and offers to carry your backpack mean to a woman traveling the world alone?
I was scared, like anyone who has no sense of direction. The journey was a series of stops and starts. Whether to use the Eurail pass or post it back home and ask the kids to get me a refund. Giovanni appeared one European winter, thick padded jacket, woolen beanie, scarf and gloves, tall and imposing, I’ll carry your bag.
I was small, the backpack the length of my spine, the zip-off bag on one shoulder, the daypack positioned in front like a nine-month baby bump. That evening, as we climbed the steps of the Corniche – the wind bitter across the Mediterranean, the metal stairs covered with slippery ice, the railing melting beneath my hand. Soon it would become my railway platform, my steps, and Giovanni my landlord.
We walked there in the crisp night air. My own place. It didn’t cost much. No-one yet knew I was here. I could ask Giovanni if I needed any help. I knew my children would be pleased I had a base. I didn’t want them to worry. It was the thing I wanted the most secretly, studying maps, absorbing travel books. To be safe, a desire whispered to the moon that moved behind my shoulder at night. If you guide me to a safe haven I promise to be happy. And the moon listened. I did my best.
The winter sky closed down and the spring began its flowering. I took photos and painted and rang the children every week. Watch your money, don’t talk to strangers, be careful walking at night – you know the drill. The pebbly beach, the weekend markets, it was all there for the exploring. A glimpse of the sea between terracotta roofs – a vision in turquoise. The cobbled streets could show which way to follow – and none of them wrong. A room at the top of the stairs – till June I stayed reading the English books Giovanni had left in the bookcase, shopping for food, telling my kids and friends they should come for a visit.
Where had the months gone? Almost two years on the road. Summer approached. The rents would go up and the tourists arrive. Time to move on. I could only take with me what I could carry on my back. A Jewish gypsy they said. One more step into the unknown. Pack up, give away what I couldn’t manage, but keep the palette knife and miniature easel. There was stuff happening back home. The boys were grown and earning a living. Their sister turned twenty-one. People were reinventing themselves all over the place then coming back home. A thousand train rides later, my mother nearly eighty. I won’t be around much longer, she cried.
His was a helping hand in a world that says, but what are you doing there? What are you doing?
This is an old one, but a good one. Tell Don’t Show.
What does it mean exactly? It means don’t tell us about loneliness (or any of those complex words like dishonesty, secrecy, jealousy, obsession, regret, death, injustice, etc) show us what loneliness is. We will read what you’ve written and feel the bite of loneliness.
Don’t tell us what to feel. Show us the situation, and that feeling will be triggered in us.
When you take your child to school on their first day you may find yourself teary and relieved at the same time. Put into words what you see: the child’s face, the wave at the gate, the other mothers saying their goodbyes, another child coming up to take your son by the hand. We will get what you’re trying to say without you telling us directly.
The how-to-write books tell us to use our senses when we write stories: sight, sound, smell, touch. Writing from the senses is a good way to penetrate your story and make friends with it. Don’t tell us about something, drop deep, enter the story and take us with you.
What about you? Do you consciously bring the senses into your creative writing?
Have a read of my short story, “Tom”, first published in Quadrant Magazine. “Tom” is one of the self-contained chapters in my novel-in-stories, “The Crystal Ballroom” (Ginninderra Press). “The Crystal Ballroom”: stories of love and loss in the singles dance scene.
Tom:
May Ling steps across the skipping rope. I’m waiting for her with her baby brother, outside the school hall, but she hasn’t seen me yet. Every Thursday when she finishes her Hip Hop class I hang about with the other mothers and grandmothers and carers. It’s a routine I enjoy—walking up here with the baby in the stroller and then chatting with May Ling as we walk home.
May Ling is my son’s daughter. She has straight black hair and brown almond eyes, slim legs and tiny hands. Her hands are artistic: she draws beautiful pictures. In her black strappy shoes and blue-and-white school dress that falls below her knees, she looks very grown-up.
The park is on the bend of the road that leads to the school. There is a sandpit, swings, slippery dip, climbing chains and a rocking horse. We put our things down on one of the wooden benches on the perimeter of the park and sit in the shade of the trees. I unpack the afternoon tea: three apples, two bottles of water, rice crackers, sultana biscuits, peanut butter sandwiches.
The other mothers and carers come over and start up a conversation. What beautiful children. How old are they? What nationality?
‘Their mother is Chinese,’ I explain.
Some women are envious; they wish their own mothers would mind the children when they go to work or play golf.
I’ve got the bucket and spades and the plastic rakes hanging off one of the handles of the stroller ready for the sandpit. I keep them in the boot of the car between visits. Also in the boot is the collapsible stroller, the picnic blanket, the extra booster seat, the beach chair and the Cancer Council tent all folded up tight in its blue bag. I’m prepared for all possibilities.
When we leave the park we stop outside the rose garden of the RSL club so May Ling can pick a flower to take home to her mummy. Sometimes we sing a song from The Wizard of Oz. Today May Ling is chanting, Where’s my daddy? Where’s my daddy? I’d said to her that he might drive past and give her a lift like he’d done once before.
Ingrid said she’s surprised that with all his qualifications he can’t get a job. I said he doesn’t want any job. It has to be the right job, even if it takes him six months—yet again—to find it.
Last week I was standing in the kitchen at his house and he was rinsing the plates on the bench and stacking them into the dishwasher. I told him that May Ling had asked if mummy and daddy were getting a divorce. He laughed and said he would have to tell her to stop telling me things. ‘Don’t stop her from talking to me,’ I said. ‘Everyone fights. I told her that.’
After dinner and when it’s time for him to go upstairs to run a bath, I say my goodbyes. I am not allowed to go up because they all get in the bath together. He gives me a couple of chocolates from out of the fridge to eat on my way home before kissing me on the cheek at the front door.
‘Drive carefully, Sofia,’ he calls out as I head towards the car.
When I’d told him about the split-up with Tom he’d said he could never understand what on earth I’d seen in the man.
Doctor Ross had said that a lot of people continue in a relationship because they don’t want to go through the pain of breaking up. ‘In six months time you won’t feel a thing,’ he said in an effort to reassure me.
I shrugged. ‘The grandchildren won’t be pleased.’
‘Grandma’s broken up with her surfie boyfriend.’ he joked.
*
A seagull, wings flapping calmly and evenly, passes this place where I sit. It’s a crescent-shaped bay on the harbour where a man and a woman walk hand in hand along the beach, their dog running ahead. Tiny ripples on the water drift gently towards the shore.
Tom seemed calm at first, after I said what must have disappointed him, but then he became withdrawn and went into the bathroom. He cleaned his teeth and then came back out. He pulled the sheets back on the bed. He got in and appeared to fall asleep straight away.
‘Good night,’ I said to his back.
‘I thought I said goodnight,’ he said, turning towards me.
‘Goodnight,’ I said kissing him on the cheek.
He turned away again.
I can see now that Tom felt out of his depth at my younger son’s wedding and I feel remorse for hurting him.
Ingrid had counseled: ‘His mother probably said to him, “I told you she’d drop you after the wedding”.’
A row of tall dark cypress trees shield the beach from the road. On one of the wooden bench chairs by the water sits a woman dressed all in black.
‘What’s your mother like?’ I asked.
‘She sits in a corner and does what she’s told,’ he said. ‘I sat up with her last night and we watched a movie. What do you think of that?’
‘I think it’s dreadful—dreadful that you’re still living there with your parents.’
‘It’s very difficult for me. Very difficult. It’s the money.’
‘What do you want from him?’ his mother said to me, unable to hide the hatred in her voice, when I’d called that one time.
I told Tom what his mother said.
He wanted to say to her: ‘Are you pleased—are you pleased now? Have you got what you want?’
So now I am back to how things had been before, alone at nights, and as though he had never existed.
In the school holidays May Ling usually stays for a day or two at my place. One day recently she came running up the steps carrying a drawing and a poster of a horse. I came out to meet her, wiping my hands on the chequered tea-towel. I’m sure my face was flushed from the heat. May Ling’s floral skirt was almost to her ankles as she kicked off her shoes at the back door. I said to her that she looked as pretty as a picture.
‘Do you have the photos? The ones of daddy when he was a baby? I’ve been waiting all day to see the photos.’
‘Yes, yes. Come on in and we’ll get out the album.’
The last of the sun’s light slanted through the blinds as we sat side by side turning the pages. ‘You don’t look anything like you used to look,’ she said.
‘It was a long time ago,’ I sighed. ‘My hair is not the same. Poppy looks very different too, don’t you think?’
She shook her head. ‘No. He looks the same to me. Poppy looks the same.’
‘It must be my hairstyle.’
‘Why did you and Poppy divorce?’
‘I got married too young. I was only a teenager.’
‘Did you have a fight?’
I didn’t answer so she moved the conversation on to the split up with Tom. She’s let me know several times that she’s upset about it and can’t understand why it’s happened.
‘And what about you and Tom and your divorce?’ she asked, rolling her eyes upward. ‘Or whatever you call it. The divorce that isn’t a divorce. Did you have a fight?’
‘Yes, I told you before.’
‘What about?’
‘It was about a couple of things.’
‘What did you fight about?’
‘I told you one of the things.’
‘I’ve forgotten. What things?’
‘It’s very hard to tell you because you’re only six years old and you mightn’t understand.’
‘Tell me and I’ll tell you if I understand.’
‘Well it’s hard to say exactly. Like, can you put into words why you didn’t like that teacher at school, except that she expected too much of you?’
‘Yes. She asked us to draw our favourite place. I said, Port Stephens is my favourite place but I don’t know how to draw it. She said, Just do it, and didn’t give me any help. Miss McDonald used to help us do things. Not, Do this, Do that. So, there I’ve said it. It’s your turn now.’
I was uncomfortable having this conversation with May Ling. Her father has warned me that she will persist and persist and persist until she gets the answers and the more you try to escape her questions the more she persists. May Ling is not like other six-year-olds. Her parents treat her as an equal and she appears to be very mature. She knows I met Tom at a dance. It was a ‘meet your match’ dance and you had to choose a name for yourself from the name cards laid out at the front door when you arrived. Like Batman and Robin, Bec and Lleyton. You chose a card and had to find your matching partner. He selected Tarzan and I chose Jane.
‘Well, I told you the bit about the photo,’ I said.
‘What photo?’
‘When I saw the photo in his wallet. It was a rude picture.’
‘A bare bottom?’
‘No, the top half.’
‘Of a friend?’
‘No. He cut the photo out of a magazine.’
‘Who was she?’
‘No-one he knew. Just someone he’d cut out of a magazine. There was no photo of his sons or of me.’
‘I don’t think that’s so bad,’ she said. ‘What else happened? You said there were two things?’
‘He was a lot younger.’
‘You could have said your birthday came before his.’
‘Well what do you think would be a good reason?’
‘If he found another girlfriend.’
Outside a van rounded the bend of the road and disappeared down the hill with a swooshing sound. After a pause I said: ‘I remember now why we split up. The problem was that I didn’t love him and he said he loved me.’
She frowned. ‘Well, let’s play a game. One of us is Tom and the other one is you and we have the fight.’
‘No, darling. Let’s go upstairs and have a story. It’s late. It’s already past your bedtime.’
‘Let’s do it, Sofia. I’ll be Tom.’ She scowled at me her brows knitted in a triangle. ‘Oh Sofia,’ she pleaded.
‘If you go to bed now I’ll let you choose the story or otherwise I’ll chose it.’
She crossed her arms with a ‘Humph’. Then, ‘Well show me how you used to dance with Tom. You said that’s where you met him.
Taking her hand I said, ‘Come on, darling.’
We went up to her bedroom and she looked through her bookcase carefully for the appropriate story. No Dr Seuss or The Little Mermaid tonight. Instead she decided on Beauty and the Beast: the story of a man who is unable to love someone, so he’s turned into an ugly beast.
*
It was dark in the lounge room, but I didn’t open the shutters. I didn’t feel anything in particular, no hate, no repugnance. I had agreed that he could come when he asked the previous evening. I paid close attention to the sounds, to the light, to the noises in the
park next door that had enveloped the room. He looked at me stretched out on the couch expecting me to speak. I didn’t look him in the face. Didn’t look at him at all.
‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘It will be better this time. Things will be better.’
He removed my shoes, threw them on the floor. ‘So you’ll give me another chance?’
He knelt beside me. Didn’t say any more that he loves me. Said, ‘It’s a comfort to know we’ll keep seeing each other.’
I didn’t answer.
‘That’s all I want,’ he said. ‘Just to know I’m going to see you.’
He unzipped my jeans.
‘You know it will end again,’ I said.
‘Not too soon though. Will it?’
Slowly. Slow, patient. With my eyes shut. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m prepared to take the risk,’ he said. ‘I want to. I don’t want to not see you again.’
I stroked his hair.
He pulled off his T-shirt. Undressed himself.
A seagull, wings flapping gently and evenly passes this place where I sit. He skirts the line of the beach between water and sand and finally comes to rest on the top rung of the railing that defines the path to the beach.
‘Sex is good for you,’ the female doctor had said, moving back to her desk. It was a routine examination.
‘Us women need the testosterone,’ she added with a little smile.
I’d wanted to end it again, it must have been for the fifth time. After the phone call I felt angry and wanted to tell him not to come. I was letting him visit against my will, since I was still angry. The next night and for several nights after that I wanted to tell him not to come. He’s conducted himself in a way that disgusted me. He denied he’d had a couple of drinks and said he was tired, that no, he hadn’t been drinking, he was just tired.
I was silent at first, after he said what repulsed me, but then he sensed my lack of warmth and said he’d call again before the weekend. He asked who I was going out to dinner with and I say it was a married couple, some friends who had invited other friends of mine but I didn’t want to include him in the invitation because he’d feel uncomfortable with these people and this would make me ill at ease too. He could come on the Friday.
‘You were waiting for him to grow up, but he hasn’t,’ Dr Ross had said forcefully, with intention, as was his way. ‘It won’t work. You’ll get bored with him again. You don’t like the uncertainty. You’re in control in this relationship. You’re the adult. He’s the child. It’s your call—your choice. I just try to give you support.’
*
The wind blows from the south. The waves soften at their edges. May Ling is playing in the sand with her red bucket. She’s looking for schools of fish to catch, the white plastic ice cream container full of shells and sand and seaweed. Her small fingers rearrange the pieces of her collection. A seaplane labours against the wind, not quite balanced between sea and clouds.
‘May Ling,’ I call out. ‘Look at the seaplane.’
She looks up through the brim of her black eyelashes then walks up towards me.
‘Look what I’ve got,’ she says, opening her fingers.
‘What sugar plum?’
‘Shells.’
‘Have you ever collected shells before?’
‘No.’ She puts them into the plastic container filled with seawater and sand. ‘A fish tank,’ she says proudly.
‘Do you like this beach?’
She shrugs. ‘It’s not too bad.’
She walks back to the water’s edge, tiptoeing between the rocks and the flotsam and jetsam that the waves have left on the shore, skipping across the moss-covered stones.
‘Sofia , can you come in with me?’ she calls out. ‘Come into the water and help me catch some fish.’
There is the sound of the waves lapping the shore. Butterflies—mostly turquoise and black—more colour than the birds, flit between the branches and flap in front of the harbour. The sea plane finishes its circling and lands not far from the beach.
‘There’s something so wonderful about watching the waves,’ Tom had said. ‘Especially when you’ve just been out there, and come back in. Afterwards I always like to just sit on the sand and watch the waves.’
May Ling comes back up to where I sit under a tree on the grass. ‘I’m hungry,’ she says. ‘Did you bring anything to eat?’
I reach for the cooler bag and unzip it. ‘What would you like?’
May Ling looks in at the food and frowns. ‘Is that all?’
She reaches for a small carton of apple juice and sips quickly on the straw before handing it back.
‘Isn’t it any good?’
She smirks. ‘It tastes off.’ She turns around and walks back towards the sea.
‘It tastes fine to me,’ I call out.
She yells from the water’s edge: ‘Sof, can you come in?’
The water is all green and slippery shimmering in the sunlight.
*
Yesterday I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant after a visit to the gym. It was not unusual for me to be there at that time, no more unusual than all the other people sitting alone on bar stools as the small containers of food did their revolutions. Jason, a friend I hadn’t seen for a long time was manipulating his chopsticks with great intensity. He was greying, confident, but struggling to attract patients to his new psychology practice.
‘They can see value in spending money on a massage,’ he complained, ‘but not in a visit to someone like me.’
After we talked about our work and our families and our lives in general under the glare of the fluorescent light, he raised his eyebrows and gave his opinion on the relationship with Tom.
‘I have to be honest. I feel very angry. If it was a man in the same situation people would say, dirty old man. But for a woman it’s okay. Someone that age has a prick that’s ready morning, noon and night. I’m more interested in a mature woman—someone I can really talk to. I’m not interested in young women. They might have great bodies but that doesn’t do it for me.’
*
‘What do you think, Sofia, do they look okay? Is this what you’d imagined I’d wear to the beach—Sofia? Do I look all right? Is this what you’d imagined me wearing when you said we’d go for a swim this weekend?’
‘I hadn’t imagined you on the beach,’ my irritated voice had answered from the bed. ‘I hadn’t thought about what you’d be wearing on the beach.’
He’d been preening himself from side to side in front of the mirror opposite the sun-drenched rosy pink chaise lounge—pale against the warm tones; but when he walked back towards the mirror, he turned bronze again from head to foot, in his shiny black swimmers. His fine body hair covered his legs and arms.
‘Usually I don’t wear a costume under my wetsuit,’ he said, ‘so I bought these Speedos and a pair of board shorts. Which ones do you think I should wear to the beach?’
‘You can wear both. Wear the Speedos under the board shorts.’
He was standing in front of the sliding mirrored doors that framed the wardrobe opposite two windows, looking at the reflection of a very boyish, very attractive figure, not very tall or very small, with blonde loose curly hair like that of a cherub. He pulled on the cord of his swimming costume, puffed out his hard freckled chest, curved like a suit of armour; and the whites of his hazel eyes and his white regular teeth glowed through the apricot warmth of the room.
‘It’s fine, Tom,’ I reassured him. ‘They look fine. You haven’t got any white marks from the wetsuit. Either costume looks fine. Whatever you feel comfortable in. You can wear whatever you want.’
He grinned. ‘I’ve never owned a pair of Speedos. I’ve watched blokes on the beach in their Speedos walking up from the water.’
‘It’s fine.’
He laughed to himself, unable to disguise the pride in his voice: ‘They call these swimming costumes budgie smugglers. That’s what they’re called now.’
‘Ingrid’s eyes will pop out of her head when she sees you at Nielson Park today.’
Tom, motionless in front of his own image, laughed again to himself. ‘I know so well not to wear the wrong thing when I’m with you.’
*
‘I thought you were using your head instead of …’ Ingrid said, unable to hold back the intensity of her disapproval. She had been showing me the latest photos of her new dog. She is very happy with Skippy and has said that he is good company and that he sleeps on her bed.
Before telling her I was back with Tom again I’d said I had something say, but please don’t pass judgment. She spat the words at me.
‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘That’s not the motivation. It’s for the companionship.’ ‘Companionship? You can have that with girlfriends. Tom has no conversation.’
‘But he’s easy to be with. It’s nice to go out for a meal or to the movies.’
‘Movies are good. You don’t talk and there’s something going on.’ She sipped her latte then added, ‘He’s not the answer.’
‘There is no answer. It’s the loneliness. I can’t stand the loneliness.’
She nodded then sat more upright in her chair. ‘We’re all different. It’s a long way for him to travel though.’
‘Three hours either way.’
‘Must be worth his while.’
‘It might last a week, a month, a year, who knows. If you get the big C diagnosis you could be dead in a few weeks.’
She shrugged. ‘We all make our decisions. That’s why I bought my little
Skippy.’ She put his puppy photos back into her handbag.
The ocean must be calm today. No energetic crashing coming from the direction of the sea. This morning I’m inside protected from the heat behind heavy curtains. I can’t see the water.
‘Messenger boy.’ he’d laughed, referring to himself, on an overcast Saturday morning, after he’s brought me a cup of tea in bed and was about to go up the road to buy the newspaper.
‘Having you just completes my life,’ he said when he finished reading the sports pages. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer than sitting on the bed with you on a morning like this. After the weekend I’m going to go back feeling so good. Thank you so much.’
He stretched himself out on the chaise lounge that was under the window next to the bed and said: ‘Everyone’s got someone. Why shouldn’t we? Who cares what anyone else thinks? It’s between you and me.’
‘What did your parents say when you said you’re coming to Sydney this weekend?’
He grinned. ‘Nothing. When I said goodbye Dad said to Mum, Just let him go.’
‘Did your mother say something?’
‘No.’
‘How do you feel about your parents going away for two months on Monday?’
‘Okay.’
‘Last time you were worried before they went away. But you know now how to use the washing machine.’
‘I’ve got it all written down. I’ve got it written it in a book.’
*
‘What’s the resolution of the story?’ May Ling asks, sprinkling grated cheese on her pasta.
‘How do you know these things?’ I say. ‘Who tells you?’
‘At school.’
‘In First Class at school they teach you about the resolution of a story?’
‘In the library. What is the problem that starts the story?’
‘Do you know what resolution means?
‘It means how things turn out in the end.’
I look to my son and daughter-in-law: ‘What will they teach them in Year Twelve if they learn this in First Class already?’
‘You haven’t answered me,’ interrupts May Ling. ‘I’m listening,’ she says with a hand to her ear.
‘It’s very hard for me to explain these things to you,’ I say yet again.
‘What are the complexities of the story?’ she asks.
I turn to my son for help.
‘The story is about a woman who is looking for love,’ he says to his daughter.
‘There are many kinds of love,’ I apologise. ‘Not just between a man and a woman. Love for children … grandchildren.’
A quiet still morning. Water trickles down through the rocks after last night’s rain. Several different bird calls in the gully. Intermittent hammering in the unit above. The large heavy curtains barely parted to keep out the eastern heat, but open enough to see the leaves of a tree rustling in the morning sea breeze that blows across my feet.
Tom and I had stood at the window and looked through the bare branches and realized that now we could see all the way to the horizon at Bondi. The ridge blocked the line of the horizon but we could see the clouds that hung just above it. We’d loved watching the sky.
‘I’ve seen the sky looking like this before,’ he’d said, putting his arm around my waist.
‘What do you mean?’
‘So still. A winter sky.’
At the back door before he left he said: ‘So you think there’s still heat in the furnace?’
I’d laughed and nodded.
‘That’s what the expression is, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t heard it. Heat in the fire? It probably feels like a furnace to you.’
‘It works well being casual like this,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to deal with each others problems.’
I asked Ingrid what she thought he meant by that. She said it was probably something he’d heard someone else say.
‘I’ve been thinking about it—wondering what he meant.’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘He didn’t mean anything. He just says things that he hears other people say.’
‘I’m very proud to be seen with you,’ he’d said. ‘A younger man with an older woman. I’m not ashamed to be seen with you.’
Now, I sit by the water until the sun goes down. Then walk back home.
So, here’s the thing: choose something in particular to write about. For example, what it felt like having a tennis lesson after a twenty year break. Give us the specifics. Dig deep for the details, but at the same time be aware of the world around you. As you focus on what you’re writing, at the same time stay conscious of your surroundings: the white painted cane Bentwood chairs in the café, the cool breeze from under the door on your sandaled feet, the hum of the traffic outside. Just add a sentence every now and then about the trees that overlooked the tennis courts while you were having a tennis lesson. When we focus on our writing it is good. Seeing the colour of the sky when you toss the ball gives breathing space to your story.
If you are sitting in Meditation you calm the butterfly mind by paying attention to your thoughts, giving them space by acknowledging them before returning to the breath, in and out through the nostrils. In the act of slowing down your breathing, as best you can, you remain open so that you are receptive to awareness of sounds as they arise: sounds near, sounds far, sounds in front, behind, to the side, above or below.
With every breath you take, you feel the air, the sound of the ball as it hits the racket, the players on the other courts.
We should always be living in the present, not by ignoring the world around us, but by paying close attention. It is not easy to stay alive to ‘what is’. When we slow things down in our writing, it is good practice.
What about you? Do you find a daily meditation practice assists your writing practice?
Have a read of my prose poem, “The Backpack”, first published in Quadrant Magazine. “The Backpack” is one of the stories in my collection, “Stories from Bondi” (Ginninderra Press). “Stories from Bondi”: the foibles of human nature, with all their pathos and humour, are laid bare for the reader.
The Backpack:
What can a man who meets you at the station and offers to carry your backpack mean to a woman traveling the world alone?
I was scared, like anyone who has no sense of direction. The journey was a series of stops and starts. Whether to use the Eurail pass or post it back home and ask the kids to get me a refund. Giovanni appeared one European winter, thick padded jacket, woolen beanie, scarf and gloves, tall and imposing, I’ll carry your bag.
I was small, the backpack the length of my spine, the zip-off bag on one shoulder, the daypack positioned in front like a nine-month baby bump. That evening, as we climbed the steps of the Corniche – the wind bitter across the Mediterranean, the metal stairs covered with slippery ice, the railing melting beneath my hand. Soon it would become my railway platform, my steps, and Giovanni my landlord.
We walked there in the crisp night air. My own place. It didn’t cost much. No-one yet knew I was here. I could ask Giovanni if I needed any help. I knew my children would be pleased I had a base. I didn’t want them to worry. It was the thing I wanted the most secretly, studying maps, absorbing travel books. To be safe, a desire whispered to the moon that moved behind my shoulder at night. If you guide me to a safe haven I promise to be happy. And the moon listened. I did my best.
The winter sky closed down and the spring began its flowering. I took photos and painted and rang the children every week. Watch your money, don’t talk to strangers, be careful walking at night – you know the drill. The pebbly beach, the weekend markets, it was all there for the exploring. A glimpse of the sea between terracotta roofs – a vision in turquoise. The cobbled streets could show which way to follow – and none of them wrong. A room at the top of the stairs – till June I stayed reading the English books Giovanni had left in the bookcase, shopping for food, telling my kids and friends they should come for a visit.
Where had the months gone? Almost two years on the road. Summer approached. The rents would go up and the tourists arrive. Time to move on. I could only take with me what I could carry on my back. A Jewish gypsy they said. One more step into the unknown. Pack up, give away what I couldn’t manage, but keep the palette knife and miniature easel. There was stuff happening back home. The boys were grown and earning a living. Their sister turned twenty-one. People were reinventing themselves all over the place then coming back home. A thousand train rides later, my mother nearly eighty. I won’t be around much longer, she cried.
His was a helping hand in a world that says, but what are you doing there? What are you doing?
I am sitting in a café across the road from a Sydney beach. This stretch of road has a whole row of cafes side by side facing the sea. This is my favourite kind of writing place: one where I can sit comfortably for a long period of time and where the owners of the café know me and welcome me. This café is owned by a Brazilian man and his wife and has comfortable upholstered bench chairs with a direct view of the Pacific Ocean. For my two-hour writing session my choice could be a traditional Brazilian dish such as Coxinha, Feijoda or Moqueca. Or a cocktail like Caipirinha or Caipiroska. I must order something and it must be more that a Long Black, because I plan to be here for some time. I want the owners of the café to know I appreciate the time and the space they are allowing me.
However, today I’ll be very boring and order poached eggs on gluten-free bread
Why go to all this trouble to find a place to write? Why not just stay home and work? Because it’s good to get out and have a change of scene. I find I need to be happy and relaxed when I’m creating on the page and sitting in a café with a pleasant vibe works for me. Other writers need silence in order to concentrate, but I need to feel I am out and about in a beautiful place having a good time before the creative juices flow.
Strangely, working in a café can help to increase concentration. The busy café atmosphere keeps the sensory part of you occupied and content, so that the hidden, quieter part of you that composes and focuses is allowed to do its work. It is something like being cunning when trying to get a spoonful of food into a resistant toddler’s mouth . You pretend to be an aeroplane with all the sound effects and movements before landing the food-laden plane inside the child’s mouth. Mission accomplished.
What about you? Do you need to be at your desk in total silence in order to write, or do you like to experience the swell of humanity around you—to be surrounded by other human beings? Or at home listening to a particular kind of music?
I highly recommend this book a friend from London gave me many years ago at the beginning of my writing journey. It’s an old one, but a good one.
‘A reissue of a classic work published in 1934 on writing and the creative process, Becoming a Writer recaptures the excitement of Dorothea Brande’s creative writing classroom of the 1920s. Decades before brain research “discovered” the role of the right and left brain in all human endeavor, Dorothea Brande was teaching students how to see again, how to hold their minds still, how to call forth the inner writer.’ – Amazon
‘Refreshingly slim, beautifully written and deliciously elegant, Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer remains evergreen decades after it was first written. Brande believed passionately that although people have varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. It’s just a question of finding the “writer’s magic”–a degree of which is in us all. She also insists that writing can be both taught and learned. So she is enraged by the pessimistic authors of so many writing books who rejoice in trying to put off the aspiring writer by constantly stressing how difficult it all is.
With close reference to the great writers of her day–Wolfe, Forster, Wharton and so on–Brande gives practical but inspirational advice about finding the right time of day to write and being very self disciplined about it–“You have decided to write at four o’clock, and at four o’clock you must write.” She’s strong on confidence building and there’s a lot about cheating your unconscious which will constantly try to stop you writing by coming up with excuses. Then there are exercises to help you get into the right frame of mind and to build up writing stamina. She also shows how to harness the unconscious, how to fall into the “artistic coma,” then how to re-emerge and be your own critic.
This is Dorothea Brande’s legacy to all those who have ever wanted to express their ideas in written form. A sound, practical, inspirational and charming approach to writing, it fulfills on finding “the writer’s magic.”‘ – John Gardner
Have a read of my short story, ‘Mother’ first published in Quadrant Magazine. ‘Mother’ is one of the self-contained chapters in my book, The Usual Story (Ginninderra Press) – a delicately fragmented story of memory, intrigue and passion.
MOTHER:
The day is softening into night, my desk in shadow as the sun moves behind the building. Birds hover in the trees as the wind blows across the surface of the sea. It’s hard to know which way to go. Every day I fear that I can’t do it. So I’m watching as it gets dark.
Tonight I’m thinking about the saddest bits. Thinking, for example, that the night was alight with thunder. Lightening cracked the sky. Just a flash and then darkness again.
That I loved him, and sometimes he loved me too.
I’ll begin with the birds. Three birds flying in perfect but constantly changing alignment. So often there are three. And then a lone bird darts across the sky in the opposite direction.
On the radio a voice says: ‘We need to know the history, the history of the before, and then to know how the person chose to continue living, what baggage they chose to bring with them, to incorporate the memory into themselves or to leave it behind.’
A door bangs shut behind me; footsteps sound on the concrete driveway leading from the back door just a second or two after the door bangs. The flame tree throws a shadow on the cane chairs on the balcony. I stop working, put my hands and then my arms around my body and think of the feel of his skin.
How appealing, how irresistible that prospect of intimacy is, with the very person who can never give it.
After a day in which I have evoked Jack again, all the pain and disappointment and wanting him all over again came back. I try to guess where he might be and what he might be doing but cannot imagine it. His absence is still as heavy as the wave about to break above me, a wave that has appeared suddenly, and then it curls over me forcing me down to the bottom of the sea where I am helpless in the power and pull of its rip.
Last night I dreamt about a man with a hook for an arm. I didn’t realise at first that the man had a disability because he’d kept it hidden behind the counter. On the spur of the moment I told the man I was going to see a free film as part of the film festival and asked if he would like to come with me. To my surprise he closed up the shop, put on a freshly laundered shirt and said he’d come. That’s when I saw the hook arm. As the evening progressed I was surprised by how very quick and skilful he was in the use of it. He hooked me a chair and one for himself when we found the small cinema where the film was shown. He seemed interested in me but I wondered how I would cope with his disability.
Sitting at my desk this morning, trying to work, I saw the line of the horizon as the sun beat down, heating up something outside so that its taint floated in on a breeze. It was the dank scent of the earth after rain, entering through the open door. It reminded me of the smell of his hair in the mornings and it came between me and my work. I wondered why all of this has to go on for so long.
*
It’s dark tonight with only a small crescent-shaped moon over the sea. I’ve decided to take a walk to the house where I lived as a child. I put on a cardigan and step out into the night.
The house itself is no longer there. It has been torn down and a block of units stands in its place. As I walk down the steps towards the beach and mount the hill, waves loom in the fading light; streaks of white against the dark sea. Above me clouds gather against a starless sky. I walk up the steps then stand at the lookout as the sea rolls in.
When I was growing up, this suburb was full of large houses and blocks of art deco units. Some of the houses were very grand and others fallen into disrepair like ours. Mother was ashamed of our house. It was basically a mass of rooms surrounded on three sides by wide verandas and wooden painted rails.
Walking along my old street and its rows of gums and mix of glass and chrome home units and white-painted mansions, I see the stairs that connect this street to Birriga Road. Those stairs that I walked up every day to catch the bus to school until Mother decided it was important that she drive me to school before she went to work. ‘What will the neighbours think with you talking to boys at the bus stop?’
And there’s the house where the boy with diabetes used to live. The boy who used to double me on his bicycle. I can still feel the imprint of his ribs under my hands. ‘It’s not ladylike for a girl to ride a bike,’ Mother said. This boy’s house had seemed a long walk from mine but now it seems just a short distance as I walk up our old driveway.
Sixty apartments share our old address. Forty units across the back yard and twenty on the driveway. The trees I used to climb in the back yard are all gone. No wild foliage, just bricks, concrete and cement, although one scrawny hibiscus droops over garage number twelve. A couple of branchless tree trunks wedge between the units and the fence of the block next door. Nowhere for the trees to branch out. No sunlight. Suffocating. Vines strangling trunks. Trees choking to death. I feel a thudding in my chest.
Drowning again and again. A recurring dream. And then I would wake and lie there waiting for the sound of the birds and the light of the dawn. I’d count slowly: one, two, three on the in breath, one, two, three on the out breath until I would notice the waves lapping up and into my bedroom again.
It was already too late when I was eight. I grew old at eight. It came on very suddenly. I saw the blood spreading over my grey school bloomers. As the year lightened and turned hot, it got worse. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ whispered Mother. ‘Especially your brother.’ January was too bright so I stayed in bed in the darkened bedroom. I was ashamed of how I’d changed. I wasn’t prepared for it. I leant against the pillow in disgust. I lost the desire to move. But as dusk came one evening in February, there was the gentle sound of the wind through the leaves.
I see my former self. The small child with hair pulled severely back at the sides of her large forehead revealing an open face that seems always to be frowning. I can bring to mind a tall gawky adolescent with pimply skin with her arms crossed over her chest. She wears dark wool skirts in the winter with long shapeless jumpers over the top, perhaps a long pendant, or cotton print dresses in the summer with a cardigan. Her hands would clasp and unclasp in front of her. Ridiculous. Her hair looked ridiculous. The hair must have been cut into a fringe but instead it bounced up into one tight little ridiculous ball in the middle of her forehead.
So I was eight and three quarters. Mother made me wear dresses with pleats and frills. I wore them with loathing. I looked fat and childish in the dresses that were gathered at the waist and had a Peter Pan collar at the neck.
That day my hair was in bunches hanging down to my shoulders, not cut short at the back as usual, but long enough for me to put an elastic band at each side. To my own hair I had added the hair of our housekeeper. I wore her hair attached to my own. I was using makeup already. A crème pancake base that Mother had given me. ‘Cover up those hideous freckles.’ I don’t know where I got the pink lipstick and the clear nail polish. Perhaps I stole them. I was wearing a little 4711 eau de Cologne.
*
Today the early morning light shines through the thick curtains, the mysterious light when it’s raining but the sun is still shining through the clouds. But there is the exhausting and suffocating heat of Sydney’s humid summer days and nights to cope with. It’s seven forty-five already. I have overslept. There is no sound in the building. No footsteps, no cars reversing. I guess that everyone has gone to work.
On the radio: ‘Just a couple of drops of rain during the night here and there.’
I’m remembering Mother reclining in bed. Her eyes closed and her hands crossed against her chest. Her mouth open. Now and then she’d catch her breath as if gulping the air. At that moment, she appeared to be asleep.
Beside her I pulled the dead bits off the flowers. I put the vase into place on the shelf above the bed and stared at a Picasso print of a woman’s body sectioned into geometric pieces. I smiled at its startling arrangement of shapes. I reached for another vase and began my pruning.
Mother leaned towards me, and in a rush of tenderness, unusual in her, tried to hug me. I recoiled, unable to check the repugnance I felt for the touch of her.
My half-sister entered the room quietly. I got up at once throwing the bruised and browning petals into the wire basket by the door. I went over to the bed, and looked at Mother, who kept her eyes closed.
‘She’s resting,’ I said.
My sister went over and turned off the bedside light until there was only the weak light from the window. She sat down so she could see Mother. She stroked Mother’s forehead; leaned down over the face, using her fingers to exert pressure on the place between Mother’s eyes, pulled the skin across her forehead, pressed gently into the sides of her face.
Mother opened her eyes. ‘You smell of garlic. I can smell it on your breath.’ But then she let herself sink again. ‘You are very good to me,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t deserve all the things that you do for me.’
Inez continued to massage her head and face until Mother fell asleep.
Inez said, ‘I think about Mother nearly every day. When Mother spoke to me in her clipped determined way, I often didn’t understand what she wanted from me. I tried so hard, but of course I never managed to please her. Then she’d show her impatience. She was always impatient. With all of us. She’d had a hard life and I forgive her. I loved her because she was so—I don’t know what to say, exactly—because she was always such an overpowering presence. But she could be so cold. I would come to her wanting some affection, some understanding even, she’d turn away from me and be so cruel or she was just too busy to listen. Yet I felt for her, I understood, and now that I’m older I forgive her totally. If only I could see her again and tell her I wish now that I had tried harder and that if I had, things may have turned out differently.’
‘Your sister has decided to smooth the surfaces and to remember her mother as a saint,’ Dr Ross concluded. ‘Her mother had a hard life and now she’s turned her into a saint.’
I’m imagining walking into the old house. Across a big enclosed verandah and in through the front door. A coat cupboard to the right, along another corridor to the maid’s room and bathroom, painted a light green, then out to the back porch and the lockup garage. To the left of the maid’s room is the large kitchen with a table in the middle and a pantry to the side. Behind the kitchen is the laundry, the room where I’d do the ironing.
Mother is at the table with Father in the dining room, with its mahogany furniture and red and gold flocked wallpaper. It is already dark and the thick lined curtains are closed. The silver candlesticks on top of the white linen tablecloth reflect the light of the chandelier.
Husband and wife are dressed formally. Perhaps they’ve been to synagogue, or else they’ve been to the Chevra Kaddisha to pray for a dead relative, or they may have been to an afternoon tea at a friend’s house.
Father is two years younger; his face jowled, his mouth relaxed, his eyes small and piercing; his smile is kindly but wary. His hands shake slightly. His hands are broad, with thick blunt fingers, and are mottled with pigmentation spots. The short moustache and the grey hair are neatly trimmed.
Husband and wife eat in silence. The silence is full of contempt—a shared contempt.
She wears white gold wedding rings that are simple in design, and two diamond rings. And around her neck is a necklace of marquisette with drop earrings to match. He has given her many presents of jewellery over the years.
He turns to Mother and tells her he’s going to adjourn into the lounge room with the newspapers, is she going to join him?
She shakes her head. He shrugs at this, confirming: Let’s see who will break first. Who will be weakest in this mutual destruction of each other.
‘What are you laughing at?’ he says.
‘Nothing. I’m not laughing.’
‘Will we listen to a record in the lounge or will we go upstairs to bed?’
‘I don’t want to hear any records, thanks.’
She knocks the sugar bowl over as she reaches for the teapot. The fine bone china dish breaks into pieces and the brown granules spread over the white cloth. She glances at him in barely disguised fear, but he keeps on stirring his tea, looks straight ahead. He finishes his tea, wipes his moustache with meticulous care then throws the creased napkin onto the table and stands up.
‘It’s getting late. See you up there.’
To the right of the top of the staircase is their bedroom. I imagine Mother sitting down at the dressing table and taking the pins out of her hair. It falls to her shoulders, the heavy weight of it released. She puts on her nightgown and then stands in the middle of the room.
‘It’s a man’s world,’ she says in an absent-minded, dispassionate voice.
Father enters the bedroom, walks towards her. He is wearing a navy blue satin dressing gown and is holding a book in his hand, his glasses pushed up high on his forehead. She walks past him, pulls back the sheet. The sheet is spotted with blood. He sees the blood. She smiles to herself.
*
At twilight the sky is a deeper darker shade of blue. The clouds are puffy but stagnant. Faint hush of the sea. Traffic noises in the distance. A brief hammering. The sea turns from blue to soft grey as the waves move south in lines of darker grey. Thudding music from the house in front starts up but then it stops. The rumble of a plane overhead as it nears and then recedes. Moves closer—moves away. Kitchen sounds from the unit next door. Another plane rumbles in the distance.
The heat is leaving the day although the leaves and branches of the trees are not moving. Then a breeze picks up. A dog barks; the cicadas start up. Street lights, headlights. The sea darkens and the thudding party starts up again in the house in front.
It’s enough for me now just to think of Jack’s face with that peculiar, stricken look. Was it only later that as I searched for the memory of his face and looked at it and then his whole body, so often motionless and turned in on itself that I either took his face out of my memory or returned it to when I stood looking at him still asleep in the bed?
If he is living around here, he may be beginning a day’s work just now, since he never was one for an early start, or he may be sleeping with the doona over his head, unable to face another day. He may be listening to the sounds of the people around him preparing for work. Or he could be with that woman with the three children. Or he could just as well be living out west again.
Mother thought that God was cruel and hard. But in her prayers she still turned to Christ. She converted to Judaism when she married Father. I’m imagining her long honey hair rolled in a bun, her fine cheekbones, her mouth held in an ungenerous curve.
Her eyes are red with lack of sleep. She had been lying for several hours wandering whether to get up or not. It’s better to get up, straighten out the body, turn on the bedside light, try and read.
She gets up and stands for a long time by the hospital window. There is moisture on the pebbles of the veranda outside. Everything out there in the garden is blurred and hazy.
‘Thank you dear Lord for giving me daughters. I needn’t worry so much about what will happen … sometimes I think I’ve had enough of this world. How am I to cope?’ She lets herself sink. There is only one solution.
She turns off the bedside light then hears footsteps in the corridor. A nurse comes in and takes her pulse and her temperature, makes notes on the clipboard before replacing it at the end of the bed.
Or this is how I imagined it.
Outside the window a bird clutches a branch. Leaves surround and envelop him as the wind moves through the leaves. He trills a contralto then darts off towards the sky, swift as an arrow. The wind heaves the branches and scatters the leaves as another bird with a flurry of wings and a nod of his head darts off.
I must have been five when I came running in with a painting to show Mother, the picture of the birds in front of the clouds, the red sun to the left with its rays of sunlight. ‘I’ve got a present for you,’ I said. ‘Close your eyes.’ I put the painting in her hands. ‘Open your eyes.’ She looked at it. I pointed at the birds. ‘One bird, two birds, three, four, five, six black birds,’ I said. ‘It’s alright,’ she said in her dismissive voice. ‘You don’t have to count them all.’ I showed her the swirls of blue. ‘And this is me with my feet in the water,’ I said. ‘And this is you standing behind me watching. And this is the purple woolly rug that we had on the picnic. This is you and this is me.’
This may be the last time that I make the effort of remembering Jack. The last time that I let him make me suffer. It’s the forgetting that takes so long.
Memories of Mother have almost faded altogether. I don’t remember if I ever loved her. In my mind I no longer have the feel of her skin, nor in my ears the sound of her voice. I can’t remember the exact colour of her eyes, except sometimes I can see them all misty and watery with some secret. Her weeping I can’t hear any more – neither her weeping nor her laughter. It’s over with her, I don’t recall the details.
That night in June a strong wind had blown through the leaves. So strong it blew small branches off the trees and on to the car. Dirt blew along the road. Thunder, louder this time. A car alarm sounded for three beats and then it was silent again. A plane flew into the grey, its lights flickering as the horizon blurred and the sea turned into deep dark grey. People had flocked to the beach during the 34 degrees but now they hurried home as lightning split the sky. The thunder grew louder but, strangely, the sky was still blue above the ocean still lit by the setting sun even as it began to rain.
I’d taken off my nightie and sunk into the hot salt and oil, stretched out as the phone continued to ring. I lay there and listened. He hung up without leaving a message.
I’d felt the grief rising up from my stomach.
A bird plummets to the earth and Jack is no longer here. I sometimes find it hard to bear. After all this time I am talking about it to be free of it all, although I know I never can be. Over there to the east is the same sky reflected in the same water. But I am not the same, not the same as I was then, and not the same after telling it.
Dawn through the curtains casts long shafts of light across the carpet. There is a gentle breeze through the bamboo as I step outside and notice a white sail in front of the low hanging cloud. I stand there and watch as the yacht progresses along the flat line of the horizon.
Libby Sommer, Author 