2010 Blueprint

Dear all,

I’m off to my mother’s property tomorrow, bright an early, where I will be spending a glorious and intimate Christmas with my mother, step father, sister, husband, three dogs, a mob of roo’s and hopefully not too many snakes. This year will be quiet, but a particularly special one, as it is the first Christmas in my mother’s new home.; the home she’s been running to since she was young. In a way I think it is the home of all our hearts, because that’s where we all congregate and can be our best selves.

This Christmas is also a little bittersweet for me, since I would be six months pregnant had I not lost the baby in September. But I’m not sad, just nostalgic. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into my projects after Christmas. I’ll be returning from the property refreshed and ready for the New Year. I plan to go into 2010 working hard and now that the library is up and running, that task will be so much easier. I always try to start the year the way I plan to spend it.

During my time away I will be reading a lot, talking a lot, and of course, writing, but mostly I will be thinking about my 2010 blueprint. I hope to post this blueprint when I return, before New Year’s Eve, so I can look back and check myself against it.

Anyway, I really just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone. Have a safe and happy Christmas no matter where you are. Don’t forget to give a little love back to Santa – cookies, letters of appreciation, hot chocolate if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, and an ice tea if you life in the South.

Signing off till after Christmas . . .

My place to stand

I don’t mean to be away from my blog so  long and honestly, I don’t like to be away at all. I’ve come to enjoy communicating with other writers and readers in a way that is mutually stimulating for all of us. In the last couple of days I started to notice that something was missing. I took me until this morning to realise it’s because I haven’t posted in a week. I’ve been busy catching up on housework, researching for the website and entertaining three dogs – my sister is visiting with her two pooches. The house is full and loud, but the library remains halcyon. I smile bigger down here, laugh louder, write with more appreciation for the art. Some people can write any where, any time. I need a place to stand and this is it. Good things are happening now and I believe they will continue. Where do  you like to write?

A quick review of 2009

Everyone is talking about Christmas and New Year’s plans. No matter how old I get, it’s always a special time of year for my family and me. Of course, there is the ever-fun spoiling of each other with gifts and the banquet that usually follows, but Christmas for us, though we’re not religious, has always been a time to cherish that bond we have, to remember where we come from, how we got here, and to consider where we plan to go. It is a time for acknowledging the end of another cycle and for cheering in a new one.

2009 has been a particularly bumpy year, but not an unpleasant one. I have not regretted a single step I took. Creatively I’ve had a great year. I haven’t achieved publication, but I achieved much. I’ve started to develop a new confidence that I know will continue into the New Year, I’ve gone places creatively I never thought I’d go – like this blog, my website, and the ongoing novel, and I’ve stuck to every one of these projects, though at times the progress has been so slow as to be agnonising. This is my greatest success for 2009: endurance and perseverance, which is what I initially set out to do.

Unintentionally Bohemian

I’ve added pictures of the finished library/entertainment area for anyone who is interested. You can see the gallery of before and after shots here.

The “grand” opening last night was a success and the area has proven itself as a cosy and very worthy area for entertaining small crowds. The library feels a little like a Turkish coffee house, and my guests seemed quite content to sit on the large cushions on the floor or the big reading chair of happiness. The food I made was Middle Eastern/North African themed, which was unintentional at first: cumin and cardamom are among my favourite flavours. The banquet consisted of Moroccan carrot salad, Tanzanian Pilau, potato salad, rainbow salad with dill and lemon pepper, kofka – a Persian sausage on a stick, beef kebabs, chicken kebabs with curry mayonnaise, and of course the obligatory sausage. I worked from 7am in the kitchen yesterday preparing the feast and it was worth it. It’s nice to have so many places to be creative.

Soundtracks for life

Since I was young I’ve had a musical soundtrack to my life. It is ever growing, since I find it difficult to discard any song that has had an effect on me.  This list represents who I am more than words can. Here’s my list of top ten soundtrack songs (I could easily add fifty).

1. All you need is love, Beatles - I grew up with a mother who loved the Beatles, and then I grew up again when I met my stepfather, who also loves the Beatles. Love really is all you need. This song always reminds me of those familial ties and how much I adore the people who have been chosen to be my family.
2. Lay my love around you, Brian Eno -I found this song on one of my many music hunting expeditions and it spoke to me. I still sing it with meaning – to my husband of course.
3. Night Bird, Deep Forest – it is instrumental with the evocative sounds of the African Baka rainforest people. I used to fall asleep to this music every night when I was in my early twenties.
4. Ashes to ashes, David Bowie – I first really heard this song when I was thirteen. I was on a bus with noisy teenagers, on our way home from a geography school trip. My geography teacher saw me listening and told me it was David Bowie and explained what the song had meant when it first came out. I’d always loved the sound, but at fourteen I grew to love the lyrics too, no matter how dark. I loved it because it had depth that I was craving. I guess that teacher saw that.
5. Wish you were here, Pink Floyd – this one always makes me miss, and appreciate, the people I love.
6. My Island home, Warumpi band. My mother introduced me to this song before she uprooted my sister and me from New Zealand and brought us home to Australia. I think it made the transition easier for us all. Whenever I hear it, it reminds me of the home of my heart.
7. “Chants d’Auvergne: Bailero, Kiri Te Kanawa. This is a song sung by a maiden to her love, a shepard who grazes his flock across a river and she cannot reach him. What fascinates me is that the words Bailero lo!, are of Auvergnan origin and are not translatable into English.
8. Sweet thing, Van Morrison. Van Morrison, with his folksy sound, always makes me long for the one I love.
9. Liffy Walls, The Fureys. I love the Fureys, I’m Irish and I’ve always wanted to visit the Liffey River in Dublin. I’ve done that and it was everything I’d dreamed.
10. Clumbsy, Lazy Susan – this is a personal anthem. “Keep falling down the stairs, walking down the wrong way, you try and lead me there, I tell you it’s a long way; I fall apart at the seams, I forget my dreams, I never know what to say . . .

This list by no means represents all my favourites, but I had to narrow it down to ten otherwise this post would be huge. Do you have  soundtrack that represents you?

From the escritoire of bibliotopia

All weekend my husband and I worked on the library, putting up walls, hanging doors, painting and doing all the fiddly bits that you think will take five minutes but end up costing you half a day. We did this through blistering heat, through a storm and with a six month old puppy dancing around our feet. I’m still working to get books shelved, and to get my workstation set up just so. The reason for the urgency is two-fold: first, working on the library, as  much as I love the toil, is taking me away from writing. Writing is my shoreline, and the further away I am from that shore the harder I have to swim to get back there. I still have a way to go before I hit the limits of this writing respite, but already I can feel that urgency a writer gets that tells her she’s swimming too far into the deep and it’s time to start the journey back to terra firma. I guess that’s why I’m here writing this post now – my molecules are demanding satisfaction from a session at the escritoire. The second reason for the urgency is that this Saturday, 5th December, is the day of the libraries “official” opening. Really it’s just an excuse to have a wee party and catch up with friends before Christmas: good company, good food and a good atmosphere.

There is a feeling in the garden and library of comfort. It has nothing of the forced silence of a university library and nor the calamity of a public library. You can eat, sing or dance in here if you want to. There’s even a pool table, great for smacking the cue ball around when the muse is being difficult, or to stimulate the blood flow when you’ve been sitting too long. I suspect I will use it when I need to “roll” thoughts around in my mind. You can pick up a musical instrument and pluck, hoot, thrum or whistle along with the eclectic styles coming through the surround sound system. And of course you can pick up a book, or several, and retreat to one of several corners to sink into the pages: there’s the huge Ontario one seater with matching Ottoman, or any of three large cushions, there’s the swinging three-seater out in the garden or cushioned benches. You can make yourself a cuppa, or grab a cold drink or biscuit. Of course I don’t imagine anyone other than myself doing too often: it is, after all, my own private playground, designed and developed to my own tastes. I suspect when I’m done, it will look more like a large curiosity cabinet than a library. I will be the eccentric writer-lady who lives under the house in a mini-museum with her crazy music and equally crazy dog.

Celebrate with music

At last! The library is all but finished. My computer is installed in its new and permanent home. All that is left to do is bring all my writing paraphernalia and of course, the books. The latter I’m savouring for tonight when it will be cooler. For a bibliphile, shelving books in their new home is a serious and contemplative time. I live every one of those books and I plan to enjoy this part of the process.

Looking around me now, as I write this, I feel as if I’ve come home. In the middle of suburbia, in a town with almost two million souls, I have found a place to retreat to, a place of reflection and seclusion, which all writers need.

For now I’m going to celebrate my new library with music. I’ll post photos soon.

The door to bibliotopia

Here it is! The door that links the library of bibliotopia to its own private garden. Naturally it has to be prettied up yet. Yesterday I worked for ten hours in the library, painting, puttying and pandering.

Before the door

After the door

The world is an amazing place

Something magical happened today. It was a small thing, but a very significant thing, given my state of mind these last few weeks. In my yard just outside the study from which I write this post, there is a large leopard tree. This leopard tree has been the bane of my gardening existence for two years. Leopard trees, while handsome and shade-giving, drop thousands of seedpods twice a year that cover the drive way, scratch and dent the paint-work of our cars, clog the gutters and garden beds and generally terrify the tiny critters that live in my garden. Many of the seed pods give rise to tiny seedlings, which grow like fungus around my other plants; some had even taken root in the gutter itself. It is a constant chore to clean them up so the front yard is not overrun by what has now been declared a weed in Brisbane. Obviously it would be impossible to collect every seed pod, and we still have to pluck the little seedlings out so they can’t rob important nutrients from the natives. Today as I was in the front garden plucking weeds from the garden bed, my eyes strayed to what I thought was a dying leopard tree seedling. Without hesitation, I plucked the little offender out and was ready to toss it, but something didn’t seem right. On examining it closer I realised that it was discoloured from dying as I had previously assumed, but that it was actually an albino seedling. All at once I was perplexed, excited, and most especially overjoyed to have found this little gem in my garden. Just when I was beginning to question the reality of wonderment, God/the Universe/life shows me the way. I don’t feel bad for plucking the seedling from the garden; it will only die since albino plants contain no chlorophyll, and thus cannot photosynthesise. It is a random and seemingly senseless mistake in nature, but a magical one that I cannot fail to notice.

Spring downunder

Spring fever has hit hard this year. I’m not doing a lot of creative writing, but I’m not worried. Spring in Brisbane is a time to get everything done around the house before the big heat hits. I plan to spend the summer downstairs writing my novel, and not much else, but there’s a lot to do before that can happen. So this spring, hubby and I are working towards finishing the paint work on the outside of the house, cleaning gutters, preparing garden beds, renovating the bathroom and of course bibliotopia, reorganising upstairs, and various other jobs. I will also be making preserves, more jam, making herbal oil and generally pottering in the kitchen. It’s just too hot in summer to bother with that stuff, and to be honest, I’m really enjoying domesticity at the moment.

But I’m still a writer and it is never far from my mind. Even when I’m not writing I’m still planning, thinking, preparing and negotiating for the time when I will be, and taking plenty of notes. I’ve joined She Writes and have already hooked up with some Aussie writers, which pleases me no end. Plus, I’ve finally worked out how to add the subscription linky thing. For all my computer savvy I can be quite dense when it comes to internet networking. There is so much available that a writer is threatened with being overwhelmed if s/he goes too far. Right now I am overwhelmed, and impressed, by the volume and dexterity of writers on the net. I’ve been having a lot of fun reading other writers’ blogs and it seems to be there is a common thread pulling writers together. Perhaps it’s as simple as the basic human need to communicate, to be part of a community, perhaps it is the common dream of the writer that pulls us together, or maybe it’s synchronicity at work. Whatever it is, I’m glad to be a part of it.