I’m not sure of the history of this one. The date says 2010. Maybe I was wanting to tell the story of the other side of Johnny Cash’s ‘Come In, Stranger’.
Here’s another from the writing vaults. This was written in that liminal time in my life 2008-2010, when I was seeing one Canadian and two American men. ActorMan wanted to set all my songs to music, record them, perform them, and sing them to me. I told him that I wasn’t ready to have this one sung to me. Not in the fragile state I was in.
Y’all know that I’m slowly databasing all my writing. Today, I opened up the folder labelled Songs and Song Fragments.
I am not a song writer. I did get wildly jealous when MasteryGirl said she’d written a song and sent it off to Kate Cerebrano, and Tina Arena(alas no success). I opened myself up to the possibility of adding songwriter to my list of writerly titles: novelist, memoirist, feature article writer, poet, playwright. I fiddled around with a few things, but honestly, rhyming poetry, even as I’m writing it, makes me squirm.
I did a fine line in limericks in Grade 5 when I discovered them. I wrote 25 in one night, when the homework assignment was to write one. But once the party was over, it was really over. The only time I’m called back to limericks is when I have something particularly narky to say about politics.
Anyway, I can’t think of what else to do with these songs and fragments. I have less than no impetus to rework them.
So here’s the first one, to clear it out of my files.
There’s cats on the table, and cats on the chair. There’s cats in the hallway, the cats are everywhere.
I live a life that no one should live. I’m a slave to cats, I give and I give. I hope that they they love me, but I really don’t matter. And all my friends say I’m as mad as a hatter.
There are kids in the front room, and kids in my hair. There’s kids with nintendo, the kids are everywhere.
I live a life that no one should live. I’m a slave to my kids, I give and I give. I hope that they love me, but I really don’t matter. And all my kids says I’m as mad as a hatter.
There are no men in the bedroom, and no men in yoga class. No men in my workplace, no one’s checking out my arse.
I live a life that no one should live. No slave to a man, feels like nothing to give. I hope one will love me, but I really don’t matter, and all the men think I’m as mad as a hatter.
*****
And here is Wendy Rule, whose song-writing talent is fantastic.
I have spent a convoluted morning unpacking, reading, posting to Instagram and Facebook, reading, attempting to write poetry, reading, and generally feeling flat and as creative as a brown dwarf star(not at all, a burnt out thing).
Somehow, all this has lead me to what is either an appalling memory,
dissociation,
or alienation from my own writing.
Because there’s fewer short stories, I can usually trace my inspiration, my intention, and the general plot, even from scraps. But not always. Oh, it’s not the “I dreamed an amazing story, woke up, wrote some notes, went back to sleep. And when I woke up in the morning, the note said: ‘the black glove, Tim, American politics’.”
I usually have some slight memory of writing a story. Usually.
Poetry – well, we’re in much dicier territory. There’s A LOT of them. Many’s the time I’ve turned to my support worker and said: “What the actual fuck? What the hell is this about? Why? Who? When?”
Now, when I enter my ‘flow state’ I have no consciousness of time, body needs, anything around me. It’s pointless me playing music. I don’t hear it. I often don’t feel my feet falling asleep. My poor bladder has to fend for itself. I’m told this is hyperfixation. It may well be. I have the ADHD badge.
Later, I will not have any memory of what I’ve written, nor be able to recognise it later. Channeling? It’s been suggested. But if so, the dead poet using me is also keen on dinosaurs, space, fabric, tarot, science fiction, and dance.
I don’t know if I just have a shite memory, but if so, why do I remember everything about Bentleigh in the 70’s, and Carrum Downs in the 80’s and early 90’s, but not my own work?
Do I dissociate when I write? It doesn’t feel like it. I never have a sense that I am sitting in the back of my own head while something or someone else looks out of my eyes. That’s a very definite state and I know if I’m doing that.
Is it alienation? Do I not, on some level, want to own my work?
I honestly don’t know. This morning as I wrestled with The Giant Blah Feeling of ‘nothing to say’, suddenly there appeared on the page a quite decent little poem that I didn’t know was in me. It was about a small moment, or series of moments with XP. Nothing exciting, but it still needed saying. And I didn’t know that until I came back to myself and saw the page.
I like the idea that I enter an altered state between the worlds, and make magic.
The funny thing is, I can remember how I generated perhaps 20% of my poems, maybe 50% of my stories, and 90% of my articles.
The articles are easy. When I was a columnist for NOVA magazine, I’d get a list of the themes of the month way ahead of time, and then I’d have a two week lead time each month to offer up a new article.
Often, the theme would be something as vague as ‘light’, ‘foundations’, or ‘comfort’. As long I was 1000 words long, vaguely amusing, vaguely new age, and vaguely speaking to the theme, I could write what I liked. (As long as I didn’t get all meta and writing about writing.)
Sometimes, my initial thought was what went with. I’d been hot air ballooning the month before ‘light’ so I could write about the dawn light coming through the clouds.
Foundations though….my mum’s foundation garments of huge bra, Bonds Cottontail undies, and panti-girdle were not going to do the trick.
Sometimes it took some desperate intention setting and a trip to St Andrew’s bush market. “Between now, 8am, and when I get home, I will see something that inspires today’s article.”
I had to do some desperate intention setting that today I would generate an idea for the 5th module of Season of the Wolf: the Hulder and the search for extraterrestrial flora.
I haven’t done all the reading. I missed last week’s discussion of the reading. I’m currently in Queensland visiting my daughter and three grandkids. I haven’t turned my mind to the topic at hand.
I did take a half hour walk today, which usually lets my mind wander. It obligingly did so. A few days before, I saw a notification that Australian nature writer Inga Simpson was giving a writing workshop. I can’t attend, but thought of her brought her novels NEST, and WHERE THE TREES WERE. The latter got me thinking about arborglyphs – symbols carved into indigenous Australian trees. Most have been cut down and destroyed during land grabs by white fellas. Those preserved in museums have mysteriously gone missing in collections (let’s not admit that this land remains unceded).
Arborglyphs x Scandinavian huldra = today’s poem about immigration, hybridisation, integration, and in the background is land rights.
I can’t post any of it here, due to me wanting to sell first publication rights, but I thought you’d like to know about the cross-pollination that happens in my brain.
More than once kind friends
Make bridges in the air – They are
Artists, writers, actors, muses,
They keep all the secret trolls
Alive and watchful and necessary.
These trolls I know are of course
Secretly kinder than we think.
Who else could hide under stones
On wet weeds and mud, to call out
“Who goes there?” Who indeed?
Artists, writers, actors, children and
Also jugglers; all on the edge of
The stories we cherish, for children
And any seeker on a quest; road
Stops and becomes the bridge.
Do you not in dreams, search
Among good and evil, and find
The something in between, Troll
Who puzzled you, and as trickster
Gives you riddles and tales.
In green country, with stone bridges
And fairy gifts are nearby, we see
Where we need to go. But first
Meet the Troll, Change into who
You never knew who you could be.
I know y’all have been patient, hoping I’ll sling a full poem up here. But I’m superconscious that blogging counts as published, and even if only 3 of you read it, it’s still ‘published’.
I’m aware that I’ve done in my First Publication Rights.
When did I get so ‘professional’?
Anyway, post-eclipse, it seems I am robust enough to write some heavy stuff. Not that we saw the eclipse here. Australia was sound asleep, and in darkness. The hysteria was in the northern hemisphere. However, if you’re anything of a new age wanker like me, you felt the energy of it play out.
This morning, it seems that eclipse energy(shadow side), plus new ADHD meds have caused me to go deep and hard with my NaPoWriMo and PAD poetry challenge prompts.
So here’s a wee bit from today’s efforts.
“Take one small girl,
add a neurotypical society.
Beat – figuratively.
Let sit.
Tell her it’s normal to love the world.”
And from “An Ode To Strattera”:
“Oh, you’ve been in my body.
That’s a given.
Hook ups within hours.
Was there pleasure for either of us?
Did you like being surrounded
by my hot, pulsing flesh?
I must say
you went down
almost unnoticed.”
I feel like there’s a lot more lurking behind the inside of my skull, waiting for the right prompts to draw it out. For today, though, this is what’s been occupying my behind-mind.
A quiet background project I started nearly 2 years ago is the organisation of my writing files. I hired a support worker, because I didn’t know where to start on this enormous project.
At first, it was just putting all the articles in one folder, the poems in another, short stories in yet another.
Then Josie the Wonder Support Worker found me an easy-to-use database called AirTable and helped me set up databases for my various categories of writing.
When I interviewed Josie, I said there were maybe 80 articles, perhaps 30 short stories in the ‘unfinished’ basket, and 300 poems or so in first draft.
I have underestimated my output considerably. Josie has moved on, and I’m now working with Em the Blonde.
Short stories – 86 in first draft.
Articles – close to 120 published, 20 or so unpublished.
Poetry – today I databased poem number 1500, and there is more to go. This includes the published ones, and those on my books, and those I read out on TikTok. (Take into account the 5 or so new poems I’ve written for Season of the Wolf, the NaPoWriMo count which will be 30, and the April PAD poetry challenge, which will be another 30.)
I have not yet found or databased my 2 one-act plays, and the 30 minute radio play.
I can no longer find my old Star Trek fan fiction, but the State or National Library archives will help me find copies of the stories in the old SPOCK, BEYOND ANTARES, KATRA, METALUNA and THE MENTOR fanzines.
I have 3-4 first draft memoirs, the start of an autobiography, and 5 novels in first draft.
There are some song fragments, haiku, scifaiku, and other sundries.
I was somehow under impression that I hadn’t written very much since 1989. Oh, my dear mind, what a big lie you’ve been telling me!
Anyway, hurray for poem 1500! Onwards with more databasing next week.
The earrings I had stashed away as a reward for reaching 1500 poems.
That was a question that landed in my Messenger inbox this morning, from a friend. What do I hope to get out of TikTok?
Well, the original TikTok conversation came when I had my annual progressed chart reading with my astrologer friend, Stella Woods aka Stella StarWoman, now residing in the UK. I was bemoaning the slow process of write story/poem/article-polish-edit-polish again-source likely homes from it-send out-wait for response etc. The game writers play of submission/offering and pubication.
She suggested that I read my poems out on TikTok. Now, I’m someone who values traditional publishing. I want to see my name in print in places that are not curated by me. I want my poems in journals and magazines and anthologies. Ditto my stories, and articles, and creative non fiction. I’m not a tidal wave. I’m a slow-creeping flood current, mooching up streams and into bays. Until I’m suddenly everywhere.
( I had that experience in the noughties, when I was in Nova and Living Now and Spellcraft, and SageWoman, and Witches and Pagans, and Circle. No witch or pagan was safe from picking up a new age-y or witchie type magazine without finding me in there somewhere.)
I initially scoffed at the TikTok idea. It meant that those poems would be classified as published. These days, a wee limerick you jolly up on Twitter counts as publication, or a haiku on Instagram. It meant I couldn’t then send those poems out to publications who didn’t accept reprints(and that’s most of them). I felt I was doing myself wrong.
But, folx, I have over 1300 poems that I’ve databased so far. I think I can sacrifice 52 to a year of TikTok. or even 104 to two years.
What do I hope to get out of it? Well, sometimes I do things out of curiosity. Fuck around and find out. But, I also dream that I’ll be discovered, the way Rupi Kaur, Atticus, and Amanda Lovelace were discovered on Instagram. Oh, how I long to be a breakout TikTok poetry sensation.
But, mostly, it’s fuck around and find out. My most recent poem read on TT last Sunday garnered over 1000 views within a few hours. The audience has built from 600 or so views of my first poem 5 weeks ago. I can maybe presume that I have an audience. Or that switching from Friday to Sunday posting means that more people who are scrolling idly come across me. I’d like to think I have a following.
I once joked that I was going to keep writing until I had groupies. And yes, a few guys at a science fiction convention flung themselves down and started scrabbling at my ankles and legs, and making whining noises. Cute, guys, real cute. Made me laugh, anyway.
On the other hand, a couple of years ago, PizzaBoy and I were having an early evening potter along Frankston Beach, enjoying the warmth of summer, and hoping to be there long enough for the sunset. He was in baggy shorts and a tatty tshirt. I had on a singlet top, and a long skirt tucked up into my knickers, as I waded through the shallows. I wore a large white sunhat. Both of our lily white legs glowed neon.
“Good thing I’m not a world-famous author, because the papparazzi would have a field day with us right now,” I said.
So, what do I want from my TikTok experiment? For people to encounter my poetry, and have it mean something to them. For some wee poem to make its way into a heart, a mind.
Me at the 2011 launch of A WOMAN OF MARS, at Renovation, the world science fiction convention in Reno. Inside, I am having conniption fits, and shortly after, attempted to hide in a cupboard to escape the attention. I am much better at being An Author On Display now.
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