The Girl

Not sure when I first wrote this, or why.  I stumbled across it today as I was looking for something else and thought I might as well post it here as it may never see the light of day anywhere else!

He lies there asleep, or pretending, and she slips in behind him.  The earth is warm and so is he.  Her body presses into the curve of his back, the bend of his legs.  He smells of fresh sweat, but clean beneath, the same detergent her mother uses.  This could stop her, the thought of her mother and with that the memory that she herself is little more than a child, but it doesn’t.  Childhood taboos are no longer strong enough to control the pull of this.

She focuses on the hairs at the back of his neck, behind where he can’t see and so does not know to shave.  If she was with him, she would run the razor over these hidden hairs for him.  These are the type of intimacies her mother does for her father, a woman for the man she loves.  And this is a man, not like the boy-children at her school with their long legs and awkward movements, soft facial hair, new, strange body odours; the friends of her childhood still morphing to fit what will be their adult bodies.

His body tightens as he realises she is there; his skin is still warm, but he is no longer as pliant as he was in his rest.  She runs one hand down his arm, like she used to do over the fur of her dog, barely touching him.  The movement is meant to soothe, but still she feels the rigidness of his back against her.  She rests her hand on him more firmly now, the cord of muscle in his forearm strengthened by his work. She presses around this hard mass of him, curving her palm to fit.  She feels the twitch, the quiver of fibres beneath the surface.

She moves her face forward and touches her lips to the back of his neck where the hairs curl.  It is too soft for a kiss, merely the brushing of her skin against his, but immediately she feels the tremor move through his body.  She recognises the shudder for what it is – two forces colliding, his desire for her and his fear, his body and his mind.  It had been this way for her too, for a long time.  But not now, last night had cured her indecision.

We can’t do this, he says, almost a whisper.  You’re too young and I’m too old.  She kisses the back of his neck now, her mouth slightly open, breath hot.  We can’t do this, he says again.  This time he is pleading and she hears the fear in his voice.  His fear of her; his fear of her power.  She is young and desirable and doesn’t care about consequences and that is enough to make her dangerous, and irresistible.  She knows it.

She moves her hand up his arm, pushing his sleeve up as she goes until she feels his bicep and then she begins to stroke that, moving her lips back and forwards against his neck in the same rhythm.  He moans softly and she presses harder against him, lifting one leg over the top of his.  His sigh, when she does that, is deep and old, resolve leaving, resignation entering; he isn’t nearly strong enough to oppose her.

He turns to face her and she feels the full blast of him, male and strength and desire.  Every part of her body is hot now – even where she presses into the ground, even where the air moves over and under her loose dress, her eyelids are on fire, her fingers burn, her body is a furnace. 

Stroking the hair from her face, he kisses her.  He kisses her and strokes her face and her arm and her bare leg where it rests against him and she is consumed, she cannot breathe, her mind is emptied of everything but the feel of him on her skin. She has nothing against which to judge what she is experiencing, she only knows what this is not: not her childhood; not restriction; not fear; not banality; not school; not her parents; not everything she has disliked for years.  She has fallen through the heat of his desire for her to a place she hasn’t been before.

The earth moves to accommodate them; where her body now presses down with him above her, where the movement of bodies changes wind flow and casts shadow where before there was sun.  The earth moves with them and around them, protecting them and their actions from being seen or heard, protecting them, for now, from being discovered.

At the end she sees he is crying; she wipes away his tears, but she doesn’t feel sorry for him – no-one should feel sorry for him.  He should have known better, should have feigned sleep, swatted her away like an insect, left the very next morning; he should have resisted her.  But of course, neither of them knew then where she was taking them.  Of what she would do to his life, or hers.  

Skyfall = Skyfail

When you marry a man with wildly different tastes in literature and movies, you need to be prepared to compromise. So let me just say that I have seen my fair share of “movies in the James Bond genre” over the last 20 years or so.

With a reasonable amount of internal mental instruction on my part (do not sit here thinking of all the other far more worthy things I could be doing at this time, it is alright to sometimes just be entertained, James Bond is not a misogynistic pig, that scene where he jumps onto the back of a moving train/into moving aircraft/off moving motorbike and into back of moving truck is completely realistic), I have even been able to enjoy them.

So with kids away for the week and Life of Pi tucked into our belts as the first movie we saw this week, we headed off last night to an early evening screening of Skyfall.

I was looking forward to this as an event, early movie followed by dinner – not something we do often. And I was even (I promise) looking forward to the movie. I don’t particularly like Daniel Craig as James Bond; I think he does the whole thing far too seriously – as well as being attractively dangerous, James Bond needs to have a twinkle in his eye and a sense of humour, both things that DC lacks – but I did have the spectacular opening crane scene of Casino Royale firmly planted in my mind and I was prepared to, at least, be entertained.

Let me just say the movie didn’t start well. Yes there was the “fighting on the back of a train” opening scene – belief suspended, popcorn in hand, movie being enjoyed – but then Bond gets shot, falls into a river, and "dies" and really it was all downhill from there. So as not to provide too many
spoilers I'll keep my comments brief and to the point

• Terrible dialogue: Bond: “I didn’t recognise you without a gun strapped to your hip.” Beautiful female protagonist: “I feel naked without my baretta” (or something equally silly along those lines - and this was uttered during the movie's one and only seduction scene.)

• A ridiculous villain who would have better belonged in a batman movie.

• A badly-paced plot that meandered around and never found its feet (mmmmm let me see now, will I be a James Bond movie, or will I be a psychological explorational of what happens to a man with delusions of grandeur who at one stage in his life had a strong, controlling female boss).

• A silly plot with too many inconsistencies to even begin to list.

• A boring plot - honestly by about half way through I could barely sit still and listen to the rest of it. I have never walked out of a movie, but if M hadn't been there, believe me I would have strongly considered leaving this one.

And so it goes it on. In my attempts to validate my views on this ridiculous movie, I found these reviews which say it far better than I ever could.


Huffington Post


Ed Whitfield


Read the reviews. Don't bother with the movie.

Nepal

Just over 12 months ago my sister, Imelda, began a Women's and Children's Home in Nepal.  The genesis for the home goes back three years or so when she first visited Nepal.  I happened to be up in NQ at that time and dropped her at the airport.  She was very nervous, travelling by herself to a country she'd never been to, but had long wanted to visit.  At one point she thought she'd lost her boarding pass, thankfully found it, but was still on the verge of tears as she boarded the plane.  Nepal had not long "finished" its civil war and there were still often strikes and violence.  I knew all this and, being my "little" sister, it took a lot of effort for me not to rip Imelda out of the boarding line and bundle her back home with me. But I also knew that going to Nepal was life long dream and that this trip was too important for her to back out of.

On Imelda's first day in Nepal she went to visit the beautiful Durbar Square in Patan.  Not realising that she needed to purchase a ticket first, she began to wander around and was soon pulled up by one of the tourist guides - a Buddhist Nepalese called Balram Lama.  They struck up a conversation and Balram offered to show Imelda around, becoming her guide for her time in Kathmandu.

Not only was Balram a tour guide at that time, but he was heavily involved in charity work - caring for families affected by AIDS and having founded and run a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic.  I still don't know the full details of Balram's early years, but I do know that one of the reasons he is so good at what he does is because he has first hand experience of it.  One of the critical people in his life, who effectively acted as Balram's guide, got him on the road to rehabilitation and is still one of his closest friends is a man who I know only by his surname "Lama" (which is what everyone calls him), who runs a Thanka shop in Kathmandu (I'll write more about that in another post).

During Imelda's first visit to Nepal, she and Balram developed a friendship, and found they shared a similar vision for helping the children of Nepal.  It took some planning, work and a whole lot of courage (Imelda at first provided sole funding for the establishment and running of the Home), but within a couple of years, Balram and Imelda had established a joint Nepalese/Australian charity and started the Home - WASH Nepal - Women and Street Children's Home.

Imelda continues to live in Australia, working, fund-raising and visiting Nepal as often as she can, while Balram runs the Home on the ground in Nepal.  They Skype every night and make all decisions about the Home together.  The Home currently cares for 9 children, but has also supported a number of other children during times when their parents were unable to care for them.

With my family, Imelda, my other sister and her friend I visited Nepal in 2012.  It is physically beautiful country with generous, resourceful people, however, it is impossible, from a western perspective, not to see poverty and need everywhere.  The reality, of course, is much more subtle than that.  Many people don't have a lot, but most manage to get by, particularly helped by the fact that the Nepalese are a generous people who will help each other as much as they can.  I was still interested, though, in learning from Balram how he "decided" which children would be cared for by the Home - surely, I asked,  you could have hundreds of children here, how do you decide who gets the opportunity offered by this Home.  

The answer goes something like this.  If a child has any parental figure - mother, father, uncle, aunt, employee - who can and does care for them that is the ideal no matter how difficult that situation might be.  It is when the child's last support network has dropped from beneath them and before they end up on the streets and an "accident" (Balram's euphemism for drugs or alcohol) happens that a Home like WASH Nepal comes into its own.  But the time between the child losing all support networks and being taken into somewhere like WASH Nepal is critical.  If the child becomes too independent or gets into drugs or alcohol then it is often too late.  Age is a factor as well.  In terms of helping street children, the younger the better (street children can be as young as three), because they are most likely to be willing to adapt to the routine of school, homework, chores.  Older children are often too independent to be willing to do that and (as strange as it seemed to me) will sometimes prefer life on the street.  (Another blog post on that at another time).

If you are interested in following Imelda's sporadic Facebook updates you can like WASH NEPAL here

The children, Didi, Imelda, Balram, Luka

Balram and I in the back of a Tuk Tuk

Imelda being welcomed by Balram at the airport

Facing the days

I found out this week that my Nonna (Grandmother), aged 92, has Leukaemia.  It's still very early in the diagnosis and we're still not sure what it means in terms of how quickly we can expect the Leukaemia to do its damage and how her care will be managed.  Obviously the type of treatment given to a ninety year old will be very different to that given to a thirty year old, so there will, no doubt, be difficult, perhaps heartbreaking, decisions to be made.  At least, at this stage anyway, it appears that the family and the doctor are going down a path that involves my Nonna largely making those decisions herself, rather than having them made for her.  For me that is one small blessing.

Nonna is still so healthy in every other way - strong heart, takes limited medication, still lives independently - that I had almost viewed her as indestructible so this has been a shock, although for the last few years, every time I said goodbye to her, I did wonder if it would be for the last time. It has been over 18 months since I've seen Nonna. One of the things she said to me the last time I saw her - and it was almost a whisper as if she didn't want anyone else to hear - was that every day she had to make the decision as to whether or not she was going to get out of bed that day and that sometimes it was a struggle.

I've thought about that comment a lot since then - the seemingly simple decision that most of us make each day to get out of bed and face the day.  Because of course it really isn't a simple decision at all.  If I didn't actually HAVE to get out of bed - work, kids, etc - would I?  If, every day, getting up was an act of will, would I keep doing it - especially if I knew I was towards the end of my life - no new opportunities around the corner, no real surprises, if I had no obligations and if I pretty much knew what every day was going to be like, would I even bother?   Without going into the details of my conclusion, I think that making even that one seemingly small decision - to get out of bed each day - is a pretty heroic effort.

By no accounts has my Nonna has a difficult life.  In many ways she has been lucky.  She married the love of her life, has three healthy children, 12 grand children, a score or so of great grandchildren.  She and Nonno retired early with enough money that Nonna has always been comfortable.  She is just as complex - both positively and negatively - as the rest of us.  She does have one great advantage over most of us, however, and that is that the majority of her family have stayed close by.  She has children, grandchildren and great children calling over most days, and despite the fact that she is decades older than some of them, she still has a good circle of friends.

One of my good friends is a nurse who worked in palliative care for many years and I remember her once telling me - you can tell how someone has lived by how they die.  My friend has seen families come together over a death bed and families split apart; she has seen people die alone and seemingly unloved and people surrounded by friends and family.  If a life and a death can be measured by how those around us respond to us, then my Nonna need have no concern, and I hope that - as she has already done for so long - she continues to have the courage to get out of bed and face the rest of her days.

The End of Year Reckoning

I read somewhere that life can be seen like waves in the ocean.  Sometimes you are cresting, on top, unstoppable, other times you are dumped, rolling along with the detritus on the ocean’s floor unable to take a breath until the wave’s power wanes and you can catch your breath again.  This year for our family has been a little like riding a surfboard in a storm surge – sometimes we’ve got to our feet, but a lot of the time it’s seemed as if we’ve only just managed to hang on with the tips of our toes.

It’s been a loooong time since I’ve done this – sat down to write in order to make sense of things – but I’m tired, on the emotional side and just feel the need to take some kind of stock.  It’s been a big week on top of a big month on top of a big year – not a bad year, just a big year. We’ve moved house, changed jobs, had a son travel overseas by himself for the first time and a daughter begin high school.  We’ve had an amazing trip to Nepal with my sisters to visit the orphanage begun by my youngest sister, we’ve fund-raised for the orphanage, we’ve adopted a Nepalese puppy as well as committed to help support 9 Nepalese children. Each one of the family has faced new challenges: at school, in terms of sports and hobbies, professionally.  We have been eyewateringly busy.  So busy that sometimes it’s felt as if our little world-unit is all going to wobble off course; as if one misplaced step will send us all hurtling, screaming, into the abyss.

Now it’s nearly New Year, and for me there is the end of year accounting to be made – are we okay, have we thrived or just managed, will we be entering the new year in good shape or bad.

I do know that we have all held it together, relationships are sound and more than that – when I allow myself time like this to reflect in something like silence, without the cloud of panic that sometimes engulfs me – we have actually all moved forward in extremely positive ways often with limited time to devote to things and with many competing priorities.  At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark greeting card – I think we’ve all managed as well as we have because of the family unit, the (usually) deep joy we all feel at being together: watching movies on a Saturday night; sitting down and having dinner together; driving to school; travelling to tennis comps; supporting music recitals; planning and enjoying our holiday.  It’s as if these simple things have provided the fundamental glue that has bound everything else together.

It’s more than that in fact, it’s as of the hurly-burly of the outside world and our places in it, not only makes the calm of evenings spent at home together more important, but also more enjoyable.  A wise friend of mine once said that in order to truly enjoy something, we have to feel as if we are “entitled” to it – either that we’ve worked for it or that we’ve suffered for it.  And that can apply to little things as well as big things: a cold drink after a hot day working in the garden, an evening spent in front of the TV watching DVDs at the end of a busy week, the moment you walk in the front door of your home after a hectic day at work.  

And now I think of a time, not that many years ago, writing x-mas cards when I still DID write them) and remarking that the foregoing year had been “steady as she goes”.  Unlike this year, that year has felt extremely calm and ordered, as if the family had reached some sort of resting point, like the ark settling into the silt of receding water, too heavy and too stuck to consider we might have to face another deluge.  And yet I also remember that, despite that year presenting no real challenges, it wasn’t that it was necessarily a particularly happy one for me either.

And that’s probably been the difference this year, and the reason why my end of year accounting is going to balance out more positive than negative – despite the often fatigue, the sometimes frustration, the having to negotiate a number of paths that haven’t been easy – there have been a huge number of accomplishments, a real joy in those and, possibly more importantly, a sense of having earned every damn one of the down moments we’ve been able to snatch and enjoy. 

Writerly jealously???

I'm sure I'm not the only writer who (occasionally) does it - reads other writer's books for no reason other than to try to work out what the hell it is that has made their book so incredibly successful.
And you'd have to be living in a shady grey place if you have no idea what my recent addition to that reading list is!

...I will admit that I have come embarrassingly late to this "Shades of Grey" thing.

For what has felt like a ridiculously extended period of time I've stood at the sidelines feeling a little bit jealous and also a little bit proud of E.L. James for her success.  After all, it's not every author who gets to write a work they have a lot of fun with, have it e-published with an expectation of a relatively limited readership and then go on to see their efforts not only reap spectacular financial rewards, but also experience the type of notoriety that not only results in Australian science books shirt-tailing on the back of their success but also sees them cited as the cause of divorce in one marriage (despite the fact it has possibly saved many more).  Shades of Grey is a kind of "punch the air" book for authors everywhere - see it says you can become ridiculously, ridiculously wealthy from writing.

The thing is - despite my morbid curiosity as to why this book has done so spectacularly well - my book budget is limited and usually only spent on books I think I will really love and want to keep, so I had decided I would only read Shades when I didn't have to actually fork out any money for it.

So today, as a result of a sharing friend and a rainy day at home sick, I had the time to settle down and see what the hype is all about.  What I wanted was to "get it" - to try to understand what was the secret ingredient that meant this book had succeeded where thousands of others hadn't.  I didn't expect a work of literature, I didn't expect a particularly good story, but I guess what I did expect was a synthesis of some kind, something that lifted the story from the ordinary.

Most of the books that have done spectacularly well over the last decade or so, do have something about them.  I "get" JK Rowling, and Stephanie Myer, The da Vinci Code and the Hunger Games trilogy.  They are either highly imaginative or well written, make you feel as you've glimpsed the heart of a spectacular conspiracy, or make you feel as if you are sliding into a warm, familiar, comforting bathtub.

So, tucked up in bed, with a cup of tea or three at my elbow I read Fifty Shades searching for that magical something that would explain its success.

Unfortunately, I have to say that, despite my expectations, I just didn't find it.  There is far better erotica out there, cheaply and easily available, there are better romances available - everywhere.  The book is not badly written, but nor is is particularly well-written. Above all, despite what I had been lead to believe, the story is only mildly sexually adventurous.  Despite the promise of its premise, the two protagonists do very little more than what many suburban mums and dads do in the privacy of their own bedrooms (no red room required).

So what I wonder is this - is the success of the book simply due to the fact that there are far fewer women reading erotica than I had imagined?  Has Fifty Shades suddenly introduced a whole world of women to a type of book they either never knew existed or had never had the opportunity or courage to seek out before?  Has the book suddenly opened doors to a reading experience hither-to not imagined?

That is the only explanation I currently have.  I'm happy to hear others...

I've decided to do something I've never before done in my writing life and that's to make the pronouncement that I'm committing to work on a new novel.  

You see, for the last 4 years I've been playing around in what I think of as the "real world" - the world of dressing up to leave the house, having a boss and work colleagues, working on projects and meeting deadlines.  It's been fun and believe me I'm not about to leave that world again anytime soon.  For one thing I kind of enjoy it (particularly the dressing up and having lunch with work colleagues part) and for the second thing I enjoy the MONEY - the sleep at night factor of having plenty of cash for the family needs and quite a bit left over for the family wants (cars, holidays, expensive teenage hobbies... I'm sure you get it).  

During that time I haven't completely neglected my writing of course.  During the first year I edited my second published novel - although, to be honest, that was probably less writing and more polishing up what was already there.

Then there is what I like to think of as the "on-hold" first novel of a young adult trilogy that I wrote during my second and third year of "real work".  That one was sent out to publishers around the world by three excited agents only to be slowly, but surely, rejected in one way or another, for one reason or another, by said publishers.  And at this point, while I believe that's a really, really promising story with potentially a fantastic future if handled properly, I just don't have the heart to give it the work I know it needs (rejection will do that to you of course). 

On top of that, there are the begun and "resting" carcasses of a novel or three floating around in the recesses of my computer all of which have had more or less time and effort devoted to them over the last four years.  

So it's not that I haven't been busy on the writing front (hard as it's been to find the time, particularly over the last 12 months or so), but what I have lacked is a real sense of commitment.

You see I know how bloody hard writing a novel is.  

I have said before there are only two really great times in the novel-writing process.  The first is when you have the IDEA - an idea so fabulous that you feel it can sustain you for years of work - and the second (which sometimes, but not always is almost at the end) when you realise this horrible monolith of written and re-written sludge is going to actually WORK.  That you have managed, miraculously, to have moulded it into a form that resembles a story, which someone, somewhere might actually want to read.  (As an aside some of the writing can at times be quite nice as well - but writing a satisfying scene or two is very different to writing a novel).

So I have decided - in between full time work, a husband who also works full time and commutes for four hours each day, teenage children who do EVERYTHING and have to be driven EVERYWHERE - I am going to commit to a new novel.

WHY???????  That voice is screaming in my head as well.

Because I have to, and because this novel is based on a really, really great idea.  It's the story of the convoluted, fascinating life of my great, great grandmother, who shouldn't have had the life she did, shouldn't have married the man she married and probably shouldn't have even survived her first two years.  It's the story of a woman whose life, if it had turned out as it was supposed to, would mean I wouldn't be typing these words because none of my immediate or extended family would exist.  

That why I've made the decision and am publicly making the pronouncement that I'm about to find some extra time in my life (even if it means not sleeping) and re-enter the unreal world of my writing by committing to the blood, sweat, tears, edge of madness (and sometimes exhilaration) that writing a new novel requires...