The Daily Blog experiment – Yellowed Memory

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.

Bonus blog entry – a photo from the vaults

2008, probably around June.

I had a Great Big Nervous Breakdown in 2008. A combo of: working three jobs up to six days a week, single parenting of teenage children with special needs, study of TESOL that I was starting to think was a waste of time, still not making enough money to get away from Centrelink(Social Security), and then in Feb-March my non-live-in partner of ten years did the equivalent of dumping me at the altar, and six weeks later, my Mum died.

The blessing: I was hospitalised, the Crisis Action Team for Maroondah Shire got involved, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety (no AuDHD diagnoses for a number of years in the future), medicated, and got a new brain.

A couple of months after the initial breakdown, when I was driving again, and resuming my life, MasteryGirl decided I should start ballroom dancing again. My heart sank. I met my ex-husband ballroom dancing. I’d gone back to ballroom dancing after I separated from my ex-husband and that’s when I met the man who would become known as the Ex-Bastard. When I separated from the Ex-Bastard, I returned to ballroom dancing and met the man who was now the Ex-Partner. Surely I’d done enough fishing in these waters.

But then, I had no intention of fishing. Ballroom dancing would be a nice change from the seven belly dance classes I taught each week.

So, back to the Ritz ballroom in Murrumbeena I went. And within a few weeks, I met PostieBikeMan (see above photo). PBM was a wolf of the first order, it turned out. He was a good dancer, and a player. Like so many of the older guys at dancing, he knew he was in high demand(always more women than men), and could pick and choose his partners. He had many dances reserved for particular women.

But that first night, he homed in on me like I had a red target on my back, and maybe I did. Maybe I was broadcasting ‘newly medicated, still naive in some respects, undiagnosed neurodivergent, still wanting to meet The One, the Prince Charming, the Rescuer’.

He danced with me most of the night, and it was the start of a casual fling. Yes, he was twenty years older than me. Yes, I could see he was a wolf. But I fell anyway.

(Older me: WHHHHHHHYYYYYYY?)

When I told him I thought I might love him, he said that was a silly thing to do.

And so, for the first time in my life, I heard the warning siren, and actually decided to not be in love with him. I’d had more than my fair share of heartbreak.

PostieBikeMan was, however, the start of a one-year adventure of sleeping with older men. My Granddad Phase, I call it now. It all came to a crashing halt when I realised one of them was dosing up on Viagra if there was even the hint of me following him home from ballroom dancing, and it had been noticed on the dance floor.

“Ew, hard on!” was the gossip of the women’s toilets.

That was it, I realised. The living end. Enough granddads more than twenty years older than me. They were off my menu as of that night. I deserved better, someone closer to my own age. Someone who could fit into my little disfunctional family, and give it some stability and love.

I watched PBM oil his way around the ballroom dance floor, honing in on any new woman to happen through the door, and otherwise keeping his dance card full of women on a string, all hoping to become The One. Nah. I’d save him the Lucille Waltz, and get on with my life. I rather thought I was done with men.

Little did I know.

The Daily Blog experiment – databasing poems

I am in awe of writers who can recite portions of their work at the drop of a proverbial hat. As I have discovered through first organising my writing files, then databasing the various sections (short story, novel, song, poetry, non fiction, play), not only do I have a huge body of work, but I don’t remember writing most of it, let alone remembering bits to impress the public.

Many’s the time I’ve opened yet another poem to see what it’s about, so I can create some tags for the database, and I’ve stared at it in bewilderment. WTAAF? What is this? I don’t even understand it! Who wrote this? Me? Was I high? (No. I don’t smoke, drink, take drugs except those prescribed by my doctor. My vices are earrings, chocolate, and chai.)

Delete delete delete.

Oh, don’t freak out. Trust me, there are plenty more poems.

Even those poems I’ve resurrected, worked on, and then worked on again – nope, can’t recite a single line.

Tonight, lying on my bed, I think of an old writing friend who I knew through Austrek and science fiction fandom. We were in a writing group together for quite a few years. She could recite from her fan fiction, or fantasy short stories.

Swoon!

Have I lost my mind? If so, I must have lost it young. I can recall the covers of my first school readers, and that I had terrible trouble with the word ‘after’, but not my own work.

My latest Creative Non Fiction piece

Here’s the link to my latest CNF piece in Knot Magazine. Unfortunately, I was late in getting some editorial suggestions sorted, so the editor arbitrarily made them herself, rendering some sentences….not what I wish them to convey. Having an offspring who is genderfluid means pronouns can be confusing, especially when written.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the piece.

*****

The Street, and What It Doesn’t Say | knot-magazine (knotliteraturemagazine.com)

Poem – The Damaged Chalice

Even looking at the cat’s pink nose

leads to a cascade of thoughts,

then memories,

that wend their way into trauma.

The cauldron of the mind pours

until I am sweat-bathed,

tense in my comfortable bed,

seeing but not seeing the window,

suddenly afraid of the day

and what fresh trauma may loom.

I have twisted myself yoga-style

to insist on something happy.

The cup tips itself upright,

supplies nothing,

says it is as empty as an old tea mug,

with used leaves crumbling to dust.

The damaged mind drifts along

the flow of the past.

This morning, the cat on my chest,

I cannot remember

when my daughter first decided pink

was the only colour for her,

and my amused laughter at the cliche.

A Wild Moment of Abandonment

I looked through my blog ‘newsfeed’ and saw this by Nin Andrews, from the Poetry Foundation. I think it’s the start of a review of a book on writer’s block.

‘Many years ago, my shy teenage son came home from high school and said he had almost spoken in class that day. “But the words got stuck right here,” he said gesturing at the base of his throat. “Maybe tomorrow, they will actually come out of my mouth.”’

The following memory spilled out:

I’m 17, in my final year of Australian high school(Aussie high school goes from Year 7-12, with graduates going straight into university, work, etc.), and I’m in English class. It’s the final English class for the whole term, and we get two weeks off before resuming for the third term, late July-end of October. We’re studying Chaim Potok’s THE CHOSEN, which I am very taken with. I’ve thought long and hard about this book.

I’m not normally a class contributor. I sit there, do the work, do the bare minimum to do well in assignments, and otherwise coast along, not engaging full intellect, and barely any interest. I don’t do class discussion. I certainly don’t debate. Our class teacher, Mr Pamment, ask if we have any questions about Danny’s relationship with his father.

“Why doesn’t Danny mention love in relation to his father?” I suddenly ask. Something breaks open inside me. I simply don’t care any more about how I am perceived, and that I maybe the teacher doesn’t have the answers. I’m suddenly through with considering anything else but my own wild intellect and curiosity. I feel reckless for the first time in my life. I lean back in my chair, stare the teacher in the eyes. “Neither Danny nor his father mention expecting love from the other,” I say. “Why?”

“I…I don’t know,” says Mr Pamment and turns the question back on me. “What do you think?”

“I think both of them are so far down the track that neither of them can imagine asking for that, or expecting it.”

No one in the class wants to go into that complexity. They want to stay with ‘Danny and the Rebbe love each other but can’t show it’. The version of love I have my in head doesn’t hold this dynamic. I want to give Chaim Potok more leeway than that.

I am easy in my chair, my legs flop. I am sticking to my ideas.

“Has anyone else any questions?” Mr Pamment asks. I’m too difficult to engage with. Across the room, one of the Cool Girls, who also happens to be one of the Smart Girls, eyes me up. There’s more to me than she suspected. She’s not sure she likes that.

I will have two weeks to sink back down into anonyminity. I do so. But I don’t forget that singing moment when I rose up, and became someone else for a moment. I don’t fully let her out until my first year of university. She gets a year’s airing, and then mouthfuls of air ever since.

Poem – Remembering Genesis

“and every memory you have – will begin

at Genesis.” – Nina Cassian

Just a small nip, sir, at the base of your skull.

Nothing more than a woman would feel

if a doctor used crocodile scissors

to break her waters.

(In other words, quick and painful,

uncomfortable in the extreme,

but we don’t say that to patients,

or in our publicity vidverts.)

Soon, you’ll remember the ninety per cent of your life

you’ve forgotten.

Superb meals, childhood friends,

all those things that have gone to mist

will be fresh as the full blown yellow roses

you can see out the window.

Why, sir, soon you’ll be remembering your own birth,

and back through time to Genesis itself.

Your component atoms will inform you

of their lives before life itself.

Overwhelm? Madness?

No, we’ve never come across those problems.

(Because we’ll be gone from your suburb

before you can complain.)

We’re so glad, sir, that you’re the first of your friends

to take advantage of this amazing opportunity.

Just tuck your chin down to your collar bones,

and take a deep breath.

Soon you’ll be remembering your first kiss.

My name?

Oh sir, that’s one thing you won’t remember.

Now just breathe out, and here we go.

*****

Remapping a place

I took MerPerson(my adult ‘son’ who is autistic, with a mild intellectual impairment, a hearing impairment, is non-verbal, and identifies as female/mermaid/merperson) to Forest Hills mall this morning. With Victoria coming out of stage 4 lockdown, their eyes widened and they smiled when I told them yesterday that Kmart, Target, and JB Hi Fi were open, but that Puffing Billy was still shut. I thought they’d go out with their support worker yesterday, but no, they saved that treat for me.

We went into a few shops, but it was more like they wanted to re-map the mall in their head. They hadn’t visited it for maybe five months, and while they have a prodigious memory for things important to them, it seemed that they wanted to reassure themself that they still knew their way around, and things were where they were meant to be. A couple of shops had closed, and re-opened as something else, which did not please them.

I wonder if we’ll also do this at the other shopping centres they frequent. They are still compliant about hand sanitising, wearing a mask, and keeping 1.5m away from other people. They have understood that everything is not back to normal yet, and so these things are to be endured.

They bought two new dvds at JB Hi-Fi, and are watching them this afternoon. They are in fine voice upstairs, and cheerfully talking to themself in whatever language it is they use. All the intonation of speech(English), but not English words, or any known language. I know. I took a recording of them to Monash University’s language lab many years ago.