If I'd be satisfied, I'd lose my lust for life.
Frida Hyvonen - Straight Thin Line
It's staggering that Honours year is nearly over. I have enjoyed myself and misbehaved far too much. And learnt. A lot. It dazzles me, my inability to adhere to a deadline. Might as well accept it.
What dazzles me, more importantly, and on a more positive note, is how much I've learnt about writing, my personal writing process, and what I'm capable of making. I'm really proud of all of the pieces I've written this year, and so excited to have a clean slate in November and start all manner of projects. I have a long reading list already, and I can shoot off in any direction with my writing.
I had a really great productive day today, and it's left me giddy and feeling like there's lots of possibilities. So much to do and so little time, yes...but I'm enjoying myself.
C'est maintenant!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
maybe i've been crazy
Well this here's a rant, so sidestep it if you wish, I'll understand.
Yesterday semester two started. I had a pretty good day - I'm making progress with my thesis draft, some of which my supervisor has read, and I had a really good (& useful) talk with her about that. She said to me, after I had explained plot intricacies as yet unknown to her in detail, "You're really inhabiting this, aren't you." And I am. I really feel that, I carry the story with me. It doesn't really sleep.
I also feel like my unit this semester, Writing Fiction, should be a good one. I'm keen about loosening up the way I write, and I think this class will be the right place for that.
L o o s e n i n g u p .
Let's talk about that. I need to loosen up the way I work and the way I write. And making more time in order to experiment is one of the biggest keys to this, I think. Which I have started doing, but only in baby steps thus far, really. This will change though, and soon, because not a minute between here and November can be wasted.
I remember reading an interview with a group I really like called Broadcast. The lead vocalist said that whenever she reviews the lyrics to her songs, she finds that the words "let go" appear often, like she's always trying to remind herself to get to the state of letting go. I think my refrain needs to be to step back. I get so up close to things that I cannot see them anymore. I am tired of this bs vision impediment.
What has prompted this disquiet, this inquiétude, is getting my essays from semester one returned to me. Because their results scream of what they lack, because I got what I deserved, because I didn't work hard enough. (Shit I feel like a teenager on LiveJournal.)
One of them I can see why I got what I got and I'm okay with it. Point not sufficiently argued, scope of sources not wide enough, okay. I knew already.
What hurts is that the other one, which was a creative close-to-the heart-and-bone-and-homestead one, had so much potential, and just never ever got there. And I just sat like a fat hen on eggs on all these ideas for months and then only gave them a proper go too late, and in the teacher's comments there's all this suggestion like she understood where I wanted to go, but it was plain to her that I didn't go there, I didn't make it. I closed in and boxed up something that could have been vast and glorious. I gave scraps. I gave a film without a director and set designer, all cardboard boxes and bad lighting and actors forgetting their lines, or worse, saying them without feeling.
And now here I am spouting hyperbolic phrases to the blogosphere on a chilly Friday afternoon like it's going out of fashion.
I am not beaten. Down and disappointed, yes, but beaten, no.
"Succumb to the line,
the finishing time.
The long distance runner
has stopped on the corner.
But I won't give up,
although I've stopped too."
Broadcast - Tears In The Typing Pool
What I need to do next is a no-brainer. That much is clear.
So I'm gonna do it.
Yesterday semester two started. I had a pretty good day - I'm making progress with my thesis draft, some of which my supervisor has read, and I had a really good (& useful) talk with her about that. She said to me, after I had explained plot intricacies as yet unknown to her in detail, "You're really inhabiting this, aren't you." And I am. I really feel that, I carry the story with me. It doesn't really sleep.
I also feel like my unit this semester, Writing Fiction, should be a good one. I'm keen about loosening up the way I write, and I think this class will be the right place for that.
L o o s e n i n g u p .
Let's talk about that. I need to loosen up the way I work and the way I write. And making more time in order to experiment is one of the biggest keys to this, I think. Which I have started doing, but only in baby steps thus far, really. This will change though, and soon, because not a minute between here and November can be wasted.
I remember reading an interview with a group I really like called Broadcast. The lead vocalist said that whenever she reviews the lyrics to her songs, she finds that the words "let go" appear often, like she's always trying to remind herself to get to the state of letting go. I think my refrain needs to be to step back. I get so up close to things that I cannot see them anymore. I am tired of this bs vision impediment.
What has prompted this disquiet, this inquiétude, is getting my essays from semester one returned to me. Because their results scream of what they lack, because I got what I deserved, because I didn't work hard enough. (Shit I feel like a teenager on LiveJournal.)
One of them I can see why I got what I got and I'm okay with it. Point not sufficiently argued, scope of sources not wide enough, okay. I knew already.
What hurts is that the other one, which was a creative close-to-the heart-and-bone-and-homestead one, had so much potential, and just never ever got there. And I just sat like a fat hen on eggs on all these ideas for months and then only gave them a proper go too late, and in the teacher's comments there's all this suggestion like she understood where I wanted to go, but it was plain to her that I didn't go there, I didn't make it. I closed in and boxed up something that could have been vast and glorious. I gave scraps. I gave a film without a director and set designer, all cardboard boxes and bad lighting and actors forgetting their lines, or worse, saying them without feeling.
And now here I am spouting hyperbolic phrases to the blogosphere on a chilly Friday afternoon like it's going out of fashion.
I am not beaten. Down and disappointed, yes, but beaten, no.
"Succumb to the line,
the finishing time.
The long distance runner
has stopped on the corner.
But I won't give up,
although I've stopped too."
Broadcast - Tears In The Typing Pool
What I need to do next is a no-brainer. That much is clear.
So I'm gonna do it.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
absence makes the heart jane fonda
It always falls flat on its face and I feel like a failure again. My lion's roar reduced to the squeak of a mouse.
I'm talking about tinkering on a Sunday afternoon with instruments. Tunes and symphonies in my heart that I am completely incapable of producing on the black and white keys in front of me, or the thick metallic strings of the bass.
I feel the pang of wanting a collaborator.
It's similar to the post-essay-hand-in feeling. I throw all I can into the mix, I get to those final days and treat it like a precious stone, polish it to it's highest sheen. But polish doesn't mean much on something with visible fault lines. I always want a little more time, time to basically have distance from what I've written, time where we're apart, my essay and I, then I can go back and do the additions and subtractions. But that's my fault for not starting sooner I suppose. I always arrive at the end of the process and I'm amazed at the dance I have made the black and white space do, the formation of the letters, the feelings I'm trying to pinpoint like a clumsy cupid. Amazed and pained. Most times it's only ever nearly enough.
I am on such overflow. My perceptions and feelings changing like river currents, about my family, music, my body, what I'm doing with this year. It's okay.
I'm currently powering through Jeanette Winterson's The Passion. It's a great novel, I'm really enjoying it. The way she expresses how it feels to be in love is amazing. Among other things! The state of my heart attracts most to that though.
Anyway, the instruments are put away and the reading I need to do for my final essay calls.
I'm talking about tinkering on a Sunday afternoon with instruments. Tunes and symphonies in my heart that I am completely incapable of producing on the black and white keys in front of me, or the thick metallic strings of the bass.
I feel the pang of wanting a collaborator.
It's similar to the post-essay-hand-in feeling. I throw all I can into the mix, I get to those final days and treat it like a precious stone, polish it to it's highest sheen. But polish doesn't mean much on something with visible fault lines. I always want a little more time, time to basically have distance from what I've written, time where we're apart, my essay and I, then I can go back and do the additions and subtractions. But that's my fault for not starting sooner I suppose. I always arrive at the end of the process and I'm amazed at the dance I have made the black and white space do, the formation of the letters, the feelings I'm trying to pinpoint like a clumsy cupid. Amazed and pained. Most times it's only ever nearly enough.
I am on such overflow. My perceptions and feelings changing like river currents, about my family, music, my body, what I'm doing with this year. It's okay.
I'm currently powering through Jeanette Winterson's The Passion. It's a great novel, I'm really enjoying it. The way she expresses how it feels to be in love is amazing. Among other things! The state of my heart attracts most to that though.
Anyway, the instruments are put away and the reading I need to do for my final essay calls.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
anything for now
Okay.
I've lost the thread.
I'm beginning to wonder what the hell my question was, or if ever I had one.
I've spent the past month focusing on other things, like moving house and volunteer work in the theatre amongst crazy weekends and whatnot. It has completely eclipsed my thesis and honours course work.
I haven't taken notes of anything I've read. And I haven't read enough.
Worried doesn't cover this feeling.
I've lost the thread.
I'm beginning to wonder what the hell my question was, or if ever I had one.
I've spent the past month focusing on other things, like moving house and volunteer work in the theatre amongst crazy weekends and whatnot. It has completely eclipsed my thesis and honours course work.
I haven't taken notes of anything I've read. And I haven't read enough.
Worried doesn't cover this feeling.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
and when the battle was done, i was promised my sun
I feel so at home in my new place. But at the same time I feel the threat of losing it all, because in the real estate people's eyes my position here is not yet official and they were very stern about whether or not it was possible that I'll be able to continue living here. I keep hearing Maria Teresa's words in my head: "Nothing about your position there is certain, Antoine, until your marriage is consummated." What stress she must have felt, my Marie Antoinette. What stress I feel!
But yes. My house and my housies are brilliant. I love my room. We complement each other. It's a glowing light and we glow together.
The housewarming on Friday night was completely debaucherous and mad and fun. I am definitely still recovering, feeling run-down and all of that. I returned to the family home on Sunday for Easter. Came home feeling terrible after an awful night's sleep, and the unwanted reminders given me by my dad and brother about neglected things of mine that I need to take care of. Because I'm not busy enough... But then I've always moaned about my family's level of expectation of me being too low, so really I should revel in it being put higher.
I am quite overwhelmed.
I read George Sand's journal to Alfred de Musset, and have started on her journal under the title Dr Pifföel. I felt on the outside reading the parts addressed to de Musset; when outside of love and anguish it's difficult to understand how someone can be so worked up about somebody else, especially when they find themselves in a situation that they clearly need to get out of. I've felt as crazy and hurt and in love, but it's just hard to empathise... until you revisit anguished writings of your own, which I did last night. Here's a small fragment of something I wrote last year upon coming home from France:
Where appetite lacks and music strikes the ear less sharply. The house is a dungeon, a circle to be wandered around and around endlessly. Picking things up and putting them down. Concentration dwindles and gives way to restlessness. You would almost do anything but paradoxically can not do a single thing properly, even if you wanted to. Your mother asks if you want sugar and milk in your coffee, but you only take milk now, the way that he does. And he was the one who started you with that habit.
* * *
You have come back but after months of people’s expectation for your return they have all deserted you as though you can not be touched until jetlag is through with. You have come back and you are hardly here at all. The shock of nothing having changed is too much. The overwhelming sensation of all that needs doing. You despise their expectation, because it has led you astray, and after all it feels selfish. A big part of you is held under the horrible suspicion that you have made a big mistake and should have stayed put. All of the urgent things that needed seeing to are not so urgent anymore. But you drew a line.
With distance I can see this as being quite over the top and melodramatic. On the other hand, I'm not that harsh. Reading this over takes me back, I remember the hopelessness I felt. It was terrible. I really was paralysed, I was often in tears. I needed warmth and affection but felt I couldn't seek it anywhere, I felt stripped of a whole universe I had been living in blissfully for months.
I also found writings from April last year, anguished writings about whether or not to stay in France or return home. I dreamed recently that I returned to France and upon waking spent a sulky day wishing I could do so soon. And if I had've stayed, I would have dreamed about Melbourne most likely. I really cannot predict ANYTHING. That is a lot more brilliant than terrifying. But perhaps that's because where I'm at now I've landed on my feet, with a lot going well for me right now. I think I'm just excited because I have no idea where I'll be living this time next year and all I see are possibilities. Oh and let's hope the real estate people don't turf me out of here...
Meanwhile, Anna and Katharina (my thesis characters) need seeing too, as does my essay that is due on Monday.
But yes. My house and my housies are brilliant. I love my room. We complement each other. It's a glowing light and we glow together.
The housewarming on Friday night was completely debaucherous and mad and fun. I am definitely still recovering, feeling run-down and all of that. I returned to the family home on Sunday for Easter. Came home feeling terrible after an awful night's sleep, and the unwanted reminders given me by my dad and brother about neglected things of mine that I need to take care of. Because I'm not busy enough... But then I've always moaned about my family's level of expectation of me being too low, so really I should revel in it being put higher.
I am quite overwhelmed.
I read George Sand's journal to Alfred de Musset, and have started on her journal under the title Dr Pifföel. I felt on the outside reading the parts addressed to de Musset; when outside of love and anguish it's difficult to understand how someone can be so worked up about somebody else, especially when they find themselves in a situation that they clearly need to get out of. I've felt as crazy and hurt and in love, but it's just hard to empathise... until you revisit anguished writings of your own, which I did last night. Here's a small fragment of something I wrote last year upon coming home from France:
Where appetite lacks and music strikes the ear less sharply. The house is a dungeon, a circle to be wandered around and around endlessly. Picking things up and putting them down. Concentration dwindles and gives way to restlessness. You would almost do anything but paradoxically can not do a single thing properly, even if you wanted to. Your mother asks if you want sugar and milk in your coffee, but you only take milk now, the way that he does. And he was the one who started you with that habit.
* * *
You have come back but after months of people’s expectation for your return they have all deserted you as though you can not be touched until jetlag is through with. You have come back and you are hardly here at all. The shock of nothing having changed is too much. The overwhelming sensation of all that needs doing. You despise their expectation, because it has led you astray, and after all it feels selfish. A big part of you is held under the horrible suspicion that you have made a big mistake and should have stayed put. All of the urgent things that needed seeing to are not so urgent anymore. But you drew a line.
With distance I can see this as being quite over the top and melodramatic. On the other hand, I'm not that harsh. Reading this over takes me back, I remember the hopelessness I felt. It was terrible. I really was paralysed, I was often in tears. I needed warmth and affection but felt I couldn't seek it anywhere, I felt stripped of a whole universe I had been living in blissfully for months.
I also found writings from April last year, anguished writings about whether or not to stay in France or return home. I dreamed recently that I returned to France and upon waking spent a sulky day wishing I could do so soon. And if I had've stayed, I would have dreamed about Melbourne most likely. I really cannot predict ANYTHING. That is a lot more brilliant than terrifying. But perhaps that's because where I'm at now I've landed on my feet, with a lot going well for me right now. I think I'm just excited because I have no idea where I'll be living this time next year and all I see are possibilities. Oh and let's hope the real estate people don't turf me out of here...
Meanwhile, Anna and Katharina (my thesis characters) need seeing too, as does my essay that is due on Monday.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Considering my accidental hiatus from thesis work, I went back to a major source of inspiration for the whole thing the other night when I was beyond tired. I began to re-watch Marie Antoinette. And sure enough another little light clicked on in my head. Watching the part of the "handover ceremony", where Antoine enters on Austrian soil and leaves on French, retaining nothing of a foreign court (her home and all she's known, in other words) and finally becoming Marie Antoinette and the young Dauphine of France, I thought about place and transformation.
How would you feel in a situation like that? Do people feel instant change when they land in foreign places?
I think place has loads of impact on a person. I'm feeling this more than ever considering I'm moving out of my house this weekend. I've lived overseas, but haven't before moved out of home in Melbourne. I guess at this point it's equal part stress and joy, but it has me thinking about the impact of a change of place.
Before I went to France I used to not be able to stand people who wrote about their time in France with their ending lines being "And now I am French." I thought it was lame, wishful, self-important sort of thinking. It didn't gel with me at all. Now, I haven't at all turned the tables and become one of them. But there were feelings I had while living there and feelings I get now that stick, and, while I won't run about referring to myself as French... it's hard to say. Let me try to explain.
One example: last week during my class we had read a lot of French literary critics in preparation for class discussion. The teacher started talking about French culture and May 68, and talking about the writers themselves (Derrida and Foucault). The class were enthusiastic about France and the French way of life, and the events of May 68. One person even said "I wish I was French." And I felt funny, like a French exchange student in their midst, feeling like they were talking about my country and way of life. It was strange. But it was there.
So it's safe to say my time there transformed me. Places add to people, shift and change them, their perceptions, their ideas, their pleasures, their judgements...
And you meet people you may have otherwise never met.
The last time I moved from a room in la résidence to my apartment in France I was super late in packing and it was the most hilarious ordeal! I spent all day on my final dossier instead of packing. Emilie-Anne got me wasted on rosé and that weird strawberry syrup stuff. It had taken her four hours to pack her room. I hadn't begun anything when she arrived so we set about madly throwing things out and sorting out all my stuff over half an hour. My neighbour was just looking on in horror atsthe random debris of my four months there was coming out of my door in random patches. I never did say goodbye to him properly... Then on Saturday Katie and Emi helped me move, taking all of my stuff on the bus. There was a bus strike that changed the services so we had to walk up the incline of the boulevard with all my stuff because it dropped us further away from my new street. It rained and we all got wet while moving. But the city looked beautiful from my new bedroom window under all the rain and grey and afternoon sun behind the clouds.
And here I am again; 3,000 words due Tuesday and a room to start packing. Tomorrow morning I'll get up early to get a good start on it. Because this time, sadly, I don't have anyone to get me wasted on rosé and help me do a whirlwind half an hour packing job.
It can be done!
How would you feel in a situation like that? Do people feel instant change when they land in foreign places?
I think place has loads of impact on a person. I'm feeling this more than ever considering I'm moving out of my house this weekend. I've lived overseas, but haven't before moved out of home in Melbourne. I guess at this point it's equal part stress and joy, but it has me thinking about the impact of a change of place.
Before I went to France I used to not be able to stand people who wrote about their time in France with their ending lines being "And now I am French." I thought it was lame, wishful, self-important sort of thinking. It didn't gel with me at all. Now, I haven't at all turned the tables and become one of them. But there were feelings I had while living there and feelings I get now that stick, and, while I won't run about referring to myself as French... it's hard to say. Let me try to explain.
One example: last week during my class we had read a lot of French literary critics in preparation for class discussion. The teacher started talking about French culture and May 68, and talking about the writers themselves (Derrida and Foucault). The class were enthusiastic about France and the French way of life, and the events of May 68. One person even said "I wish I was French." And I felt funny, like a French exchange student in their midst, feeling like they were talking about my country and way of life. It was strange. But it was there.
So it's safe to say my time there transformed me. Places add to people, shift and change them, their perceptions, their ideas, their pleasures, their judgements...
And you meet people you may have otherwise never met.
The last time I moved from a room in la résidence to my apartment in France I was super late in packing and it was the most hilarious ordeal! I spent all day on my final dossier instead of packing. Emilie-Anne got me wasted on rosé and that weird strawberry syrup stuff. It had taken her four hours to pack her room. I hadn't begun anything when she arrived so we set about madly throwing things out and sorting out all my stuff over half an hour. My neighbour was just looking on in horror atsthe random debris of my four months there was coming out of my door in random patches. I never did say goodbye to him properly... Then on Saturday Katie and Emi helped me move, taking all of my stuff on the bus. There was a bus strike that changed the services so we had to walk up the incline of the boulevard with all my stuff because it dropped us further away from my new street. It rained and we all got wet while moving. But the city looked beautiful from my new bedroom window under all the rain and grey and afternoon sun behind the clouds.
And here I am again; 3,000 words due Tuesday and a room to start packing. Tomorrow morning I'll get up early to get a good start on it. Because this time, sadly, I don't have anyone to get me wasted on rosé and help me do a whirlwind half an hour packing job.
It can be done!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
when I run in the dark
I'm so impatient
I can't stand the wait
When will I get my cuddle?
Who are you?
I know by now
that you'll arrive
around the time
I've stopped waiting
These words from Bjork's song I Miss You are in my head as I'm contemplating the awesomeness of a house and housemates I visited today as a potential new-habitant, and feeling delirious for lack of sleep because I stayed out until 6.30am for my cousin's 21st birthday. Shenanigans, connections, confusion, wine and cake...
I feel so guilty because this week has just been hopeless in terms of uni work. I haven't done any of the reading for my class tomorrow, and I have 3,000 words due in 9 days.
I don't know which direction I'm heading, and that's not only in regards to my thesis.
I need to stop getting wrapped up in things like imagining life in a new house and going on YouTube every two seconds to listen to Bat For Lashes' song Daniel arg!
I can't stand the wait
When will I get my cuddle?
Who are you?
I know by now
that you'll arrive
around the time
I've stopped waiting
These words from Bjork's song I Miss You are in my head as I'm contemplating the awesomeness of a house and housemates I visited today as a potential new-habitant, and feeling delirious for lack of sleep because I stayed out until 6.30am for my cousin's 21st birthday. Shenanigans, connections, confusion, wine and cake...
I feel so guilty because this week has just been hopeless in terms of uni work. I haven't done any of the reading for my class tomorrow, and I have 3,000 words due in 9 days.
I don't know which direction I'm heading, and that's not only in regards to my thesis.
I need to stop getting wrapped up in things like imagining life in a new house and going on YouTube every two seconds to listen to Bat For Lashes' song Daniel arg!
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