Friday, December 30, 2011

Considering Homesickness

It is three years since I’ve been to South West Rocks. In the summer, that is, as a leader of a beach mission team. I did go in the winter of 2010, just for the afternoon, so I could show the place to Matthew. I took him because it is a place that has come to feel like home to me, though I have never lived there, except for ten days at a time, in a tent, around this Christmas New Year holiday time. Despite that, the moment I turn off the highway and start driving out to the coast I am flooded with the feeling that I have arrived back where I belong, back where I am safe, perhaps even where I am special. And I wanted him to know, see and smell that place. There are two other places that come to mind which also create this sense of home, and which when I am not there I miss and long for, if only in some quiet and unfocused way. The more obvious of the two is the Sydney Opera House; the more peculiar is Baker Street tube station. I’ve become vividly aware of this in recent months as I have just moved to West London and come into work at Soho via the Hammersmith & City and Bakerloo lines, and often I’m struck by how happy I am simply to be back passing through Baker St, if only to change trains, as it was my nearest tube when I first lived in London in 2009. Changing trains there I feel suddenly like I’m balanced again, even though I hadn’t previously been aware of any unbalance. But there it is, in something so common place as walking up the stairs from platform three and crossing over the concourse to platform six, that feeling as though I have come home.

Throughout 2010, when I was back in Sydney, in my real home – either in The Party House, the apartment I had rented since late 2006 or in my parents’ home, which we had moved to in 1986 – I missed London, my 8th floor bedroom/cupboard on Marylebone Road, The Volunteer on Baker Streets and the friends who had hung out with me there. In London I miss the Opera House and the fact that most people in that building knew me, and particularly around this time of year I miss South West Rocks. When life takes me away from these places I am homesick for them.

While this is a homesickness for certain locations, it is obvious to me that is much more a homesickness for the memories, emotions and people associated with the places. A longing for an emotional home, rather than a physical one. For the comfort of particular people, situations and significances rather than the comfort of familiar homely surroundings. It is at this point that I think perhaps homesickness and conversely a sense of home coming, have a lot to do not only with longing and security but also with nostalgia, and a hanging on to the past.

The places that create in me a sense of homecoming whenever I am there are locations attached to formative experiences. They are places of learning which have come to signify a development in my sense of self, my ability to organise and lead others, to think intelligently and creatively. They are places of sometimes intense emotions, of flirting and falling in love and consequently the occasional heart battering. It is in these places that I have found enthusiasm and passion I didn’t realise I possessed. For education, music, literature. For talking about the God of the bible, and how my belief in him has shaped me.

When I pass through Baker St, if I take the time to stop and take note of the specific memories which flood me, I remember the liberating excitement of being in London, mixed with the comfort and contentment that came with realising I was still essentially the same me, just on the other side of world. The simple joy that I was actually on the London Underground (I still wonder, how it is, that this city has made even its transport system iconic) and of course Met Line adventures with Mel, Matthew, Kate, Chris and Hollie coming home from Midsummer rehearsals, discussing everything from feminism and Shakespeare to killer possums and giving lessons on how to speak like a character on Kath and Kim, and like a school girl, contriving as often as possible to sit next to Matthew for those precious eighteen minutes from Northwick Park to Baker St. It is a memory of having fun; of feeling like the things you thought, no matter how trivial, were interesting, important, somehow life changing; a sensation of aliveness which seemed different to anything I’ve known before. That’s where nostalgia comes into it, because I don’t want to let go of that. Because since then I’ve left the bubbles of safety and optimism I cultivated at university, in which one could dream of revolution - personal and political, and that other more common bubble of perfection and bliss: the first six weeks of brand new relationship.

When I miss the Opera House, its not just work or the work place or tickets to the opera, but the people and the fact that I know I have changed how I conduct relationships due to experiences connected with that building. Because I told myself it was significant, I can recall the surge of happiness and almost illicit pleasure of running down the ugly concrete stairs late one night in a candy pink formal dress to meet someone I naively thought I was in love with. A memory of self importance, of stepping outside of time and viewing my life as though it were a fictive invention and knowing that that moment would be one of the highlights, even though, with the retrospective knowledge, it was a moment that would never amount to anything and shouldn’t therefore retain any importance, except that it does because I told myself to treasure it.

But the place I feel I should treasure even more than I do is South West Rocks. I think of it now, from the other side of the world as I sit on the ferry approaching Dublin, and remember how when I first went there in 1999 I couldn’t imagine ever going back. Beach Mission was hard work. I hated camping. I had to sleep in a tent and walk a ten minute round trip just to go to the toilet. I was covered in mosquito and sand fly bites. I wouldn’t be going back. But I was wrong. A year later, when asked if I wanted to go to a training day I agreed, with an air of nonchalance. At some point I made a commitment to be on my beach mission team for ten years. And I was. But it was a long time before I realised I loved the place, in an enduring kind of way. Maybe its because there weren’t any candy pink formal dress moments. I never said to myself ‘Remember this moment. Hold it dear for all time’. Maybe that’s because once I got over my initial conviction that I would never go back to South West Rocks, I replaced it with the assumption I would never not go back. It became habit. Its what I did. I couldn’t imagine the weeks that preceded Christmas being filled with stresses that had to do with presents and cooking, they were about buying craft materials and finishing (or occasionally starting) to write a talk, or plan an activity or return trips to Officeworx to do photocopying and bind booklets.

But its not because of the work that went into preparing beach mission that made it feel like home, I’m not even sure if its primarily missing the people or relationships which makes me long for South West Rocks around New Year, but the fact that for ten years beach mission clearly focused my attention on God and shaped my time, my year and my life. Sure, like the Opera House, like Baker St, South West Rocks signals many, many happy memories. Moments of light hearted joy and serious insights into how the world operates. Mars bar milkshakes, singing along to Vegietales while washing up, watching Chris commando role his way to the shower block, hearing about the time Sally got herself stuck in a coat hanger, being told off by a team leader in my second year for staying up talking several hours past a sensible time for someone who had to get up early in the morning to run a full day of activities. These sorts of things I miss. Churning over all those big questions you usually don’t have time for: sanctification, forgiveness, elective salvation, mothering, divorce, eating disorders, death. But it is more than any of these moments. It is one of the few projects I have committed to for several years, and it is one of the few that gave me a reason to go and speak to strangers about why I believe in God. Being on a beach mission team taught me practical things about being a team leader, writing talks and bible studies, and making tricky decisions – like whether or not to cancel the hire of jumping castle due to imminent bad weather, I cried while making this decision I was that torn and afraid of getting it wrong, and in the end I’m not sure which decision I made, but I don’t remember any negative repercussions. Yes, part of feeling at home is one of belonging and feeling needed, important. And when I miss South West Rocks and going on beach mission, there is perhaps a selfish or needy part of me, that misses feeling like I was important, that people knew me, relied on me, looked up to me. But I also miss knowing that I was part of a team that were serving others. That we weren’t just providing some holiday fun, though there is nothing wrong with that, but that we were giving people a chance to think through some of life’s big questions.

Maybe I miss that too. A space in which to think through questions. To meet up with people who at times think like me, but who also know things and think things that I don’t. Right now, I feel like someone who has come to the end of a set word count and is desperately trying to tie things up, make one last final point, but without much luck. I wanted to write about missing beach mission, because its happening right now, on the other side of the world, and I’m not there, which still feels a bit strange. But then I wrote about homesickness, and longing for the past, and wondered if, in my case at least, these two feelings are intertwined, and I guess I have to say they are. I feel homesick not for places that have been my physical home, but for places with emotional significance. Places I have felt needed, loved, valued. Where I have contributed, where I have learned new things. And maybe its fitting to think about these things as the close of the year approaches, and people make resolutions, and to resolve that these things that I miss need not be a thing of the past, but must be made a part of the future, so that I can build my emotional home, a safe place, of love, value, significance and learning wherever I go.

Monday, December 26, 2011

thirty things: Number 22 - Bake Gluten Free Panettone

24th of December 2011. I did it. I worked with yeast. I got my gluten free bread/cake to rise ... though that was about the most successful part of my baking adventure. It didn’t start off too well. I read my recipe quickly and chucked a tablespoon of sugar in with my buttermilk and yeast instead of teaspoon. So I threw it out and started again. I wanted to do this right. I left it for ten minutes while I creamed butter and sugar and eggs. The Buttermilk/yeast/sugar was meant to be going frothy. Nothing was happening. I left it for another 10 minutes and shook it about. I chucked it in with the butter, sugar, eggs. Of my own accord I chucked in an extra egg because in the past I’ve noticed this helps gluten free things stick together. I even separated two of the eggs so that I could whip up the egg whites all nice and fluffy like to add a bit of excitement. Later I read that yeast works better with sugar to feed it. Maybe I should have kept the first lot.


Adding an extra egg of course adds liquid. Oh well. No matter. I added the flour. A mix of cornflour and gluten free plain flour. It was all looking very runny. There was no way I could turn this mixture out to knead it. I added a bit more flour, but in the end I took the advice of an unknown gluten free baker who keeps a blog and accepted that in my mixing bowl my raw cake would look more like batter than dough. I left the bread/cake batter/dough in a warm place and, when I came back to it some time later, I was absolutely over the moon to see the batter/dough had doubled in size.



I put it in a tin (the wrong shaped tin, mind you. I wasn't about to buy a new cake tin for one GF baking experiment). I put it in the oven, baked for ten minutes, turned down the temperature, baked for another half an hour. I left it to cool.




I sliced it, I ate a bit. All I can say it’s a good thing that on my list of things to do I didn’t include any qualifiers. All I said was bake gluten free panettone. And I did that. I worked with yeast and gluten free flour and I got my bread/cake to rise. I didn’t say it had to be good, or tasty or soft. My panettone smelt right, and tasted ok, but it was super crumbly and quite dry. I did enjoy it, but I don’t think I would have served it to anyone, especially not a gluten eating person. Still, I ate it for breakfast on Christmas day, and that made me quite happy, and got me prepared for a full day ahead of festive eating.


I’ve now frozen the majority of it and will at some point use it in trifle or tiramisu or some such thing. I think surrounded by cream and other nice things it will work a treat.

Friday, December 23, 2011

On Metafiction

or realising I was a nerd or a text or some such thing. Because that’s how it is. Especially if it is late at night. Which it is.

I did this really nerdy thing on the tube last night. I sent a text to my boyfriend to tell him the book I was reading was very 1960s, and a little metafictive. I flipped to the front of the book to check the publishing date (1969), and inwardly I did a little dance of joy. And then I realised not only am I a total nerd but, also like all those high school things I couldn’t remember last week, I don’t actually remember how to define metafiction. In terms of style. What made me think oh yes, here we have a piece of 1960s style, with just a dash of metafiction. I know that broadly it’s a piece of writing which is aware of its fictive status, but how to describe the style, how to explain it, gone. All I could think of was that short story I read that was about Ambrose at a playhouse. That was 1960s, post modern metafictive stuff. So come on brain, I know this blog is called reflections and fragments, but please, please, do some solid remembering.

*

The remembering probably wasn’t going to happen of its own accord. I say wasn’t, rather than isn’t because I wrote that first paragraph this afternoon and I’m writing this one now. And its now 23:32, which as it happens is a pretty awesome time. But back to the remembering, which wasn’t happening, I did a second nerdy thing. I opened up a file on my computer containing my notes from ENGL three-oh-whatever. To read my notes on metafiction and Ambrose, who as it turns out, was at a funhouse, not a playhouse. There on the screen was a list of facts about metafiction, which I knew. Metafiction pre-empts criticism, breaks the illusion that art is reality, highlights the writing process, makes direct intertexual references, directly addresses the reader, parodies established modes, acknowledges that all stories have already been told, and so on and on and on. Oh yes, I knew all these things too. And it still makes sense. Which is a relief.

I don’t even know what I’m writing about anymore. Or why I’m writing about it. I think tiredness is slowly seeping into my brain…

…I think I am a metafictive text. That would certainly confuse the illusion that art is reality. That is what I have learnt today. Because I pre-empt criticism, can be self-deprecating, enjoy parody, address the reader (Hiya, you right? – see that, I even went for local vernacular like a real Londoner), I acknowledge the writing procedure, and that everything has been said before, as all stories have already been told, and so on and on and on. Except I am not a fiction, because I actually exist, well, unless of course this is merely the voice of an implied narrator who actually doesn’t exist, because I actually did write this as myself. I am so confused right now.

So as you read this, if it makes any sense, or even if it doesn't please feel free to drop me a line. I'd appreciate it. We could enter into a dialogue. We could write a new text, and blur our roles of writer and reader, sender and receiver, art and reality. We could have a conversation about metafiction. We could be metafictive. Except that we are real. The conversation, however, would be both real and virtual because this is a blog not an actual verbal exchange taking place in actual time and space.

I'm confused again.

I should not write when I am tired. I do not know if I am writing a thought about metafiction, or about being a nerd, or if I am a text waiting to be read.

*

For example:

“… People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.

This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this:

Listen:

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

It ends like this:

Poo-tee-weet? ...”

Vonnegut, K. (1969). Slaughterhouse 5, London: Vintage

Friday, December 16, 2011

I Used to Know Things...

I have a favourite study technique. I refer to it as Learning via Osmosis. LVO usually involves placing a text book under my head while I close my eyes and lie in the sunshine. It was a technique I discovered in high school and have refined over the years. And now I find that years of referring to osmosis as a technique for study, I no longer quite remember what osmosis really is, except of course that what I’m doing has nothing to do with osmosis because osmosis requires water and a semi-permeable membrane, whatever that is. Also, it isn’t about the transfer of information.

Back in the day, when I was at school in my kilt, lying in the grass, beside the school pool (the water that made Learning via Osmosis possible), with one book under my head and another balanced over my face, I knew what was osmosis actually was. I also knew how it differed from that other thing, that thing that I don’t recall, but was perhaps called diffusion. I have, just now, lowered myself to the level of someone who checks Wikipedia in order to rediscover the general knowledge they already knew, and can confirm that yes, diffusion was the word I was looking for. I used to know things. All sorts of things. About the working out of the hypotenuse of a triangle. I knew that. And working out the sizes of angles in various geometric shapes. I could do that. I knew about how cells divided, about mitosis and meiosis and which was which, and if I looked at pictures of these processes taking place I could tell you which was which, but I certainly couldn’t now.

I feel that more than anything I need to ask, where did the knowledge go? Has it left me, or is it just buried? If I started reading something about gametes and cell reproduction, would that part of my brain kick back in to gear? Or did that information leave me and become replaced with Peep Bo’s line of So Please You Sir We much Regret, a harmony I found tricksy at the time and went over so many times that when I came to learning Pitti Sing’s part ten years later, although I’d not looked at the music once in all those years, I found it was Peep Bo’s harmony and hers alone that my brain wanted my mouth to sing. Why had I retained a piece of music I hadn’t needed to sing for ten years? Why is it that the only French phrases I know (aside from the one in Lady Marmalade) are about chocolate, Je voudrais un chocolat chaud,(well, I would) le chocolat me regarde! (seriously it is, and it wants me to eat it!), yet I couldn’t ask for directions nor can I remember how to ask for train tickets. Like wise my patchy German allows me to ask someone the ever important question, bist du eine orange, but not much else.

If this is the outcome of thirteen years of school education, its tempting to ask what the point was. Why did I need to learn that stuff about osmosis and gametes and geometric proofs? Obviously, that knowledge has not been at the front of my brain for some time, and I am, for the most part a well balanced, happy and capable adult, so did it ever need to be at the front of my brain. Did I need to spend all those hours learning those things, only to forget them? But such a sentiment goes against my inherent love for learning and life long education. I place huge value on education and firmly believe that all people should have access to a wide and varied education as it helps us grow and develop and opens possibilities. I’m not for a minute suggesting that isn’t the case, I just wonder why I can’t retain endless bits of information. I worked hard at learning things, and they made sense to me, and now that knowledge is gone. I find it disturbing that once I understood something of valencies, plant and animal biology, French grammar, but that over time I let those abilities go.

While I may have had to let go of the information I wasn’t using in order to reduce clutter and make brain space available for more relevant skills, memories and theories, it just doesn’t seem fair, or even right, for knowledge to be transitory.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Forgiveness

A short argument between Psalm 13, Matthew 18:21-35 and Me

Matthew, Eighteen. How often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Matthew, Twenty. Sinned against me. And I, I forgive him? Forgive.

Forgive, forgive, forgive, I forgive.

But, how long Oh Lord will there be bitterness with in me?

How long Oh Lord, will you forget me forever?

How Long must I daily come before you and ask for the strength to be forgiving? Seven Times? Seventy times seven times? No, no please, before that. Release me from my unforgivingness. My bitterness. I’m not strong enough. I can’t wait that long, can’t cry that long, can’t be confused that long.

How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long, how long, how long? How long before I actually feel your peace, before my unhappiness is healed? How long shall I be angry, and unable to maintain my resolve to be loving?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Why can’t I forgive from my heart? Why does the hurt of the past consume me? The past, yes. Over a year ago. She called him to say she was pregnant. Why tell you? I don’t know. But you did know. She knew that you would care. Even if the baby wasn’t yours. But he is yours. And look, look at his eyes, that are beautiful and clear and sparkling, just like yours. And filled with joy, like yours can be too. And on his face is joy. So why must I give way to anger.

Consider and answer me Oh Lord My God; lift up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed”.

Lest I forget you and let myself be broken from the inside out.

Lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

I am. Shaken. My hand. Wouldn’t stop shaking. In the cafĂ©. I put the cup to my lips but it just trembled in my fingers, against my teeth. Didn’t want to drink it. And you sat there with your head hung low and you wouldn’t look at me, and I was confused. Angry, but at me, because I made a resolve, to forgive.

To forgive, forgive, forgive. Seventy times seven times. All day. Every day. Lest I be delivered to the jailors. Lest there be torment in my soul. But I have forgiven. And I have trusted. I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Friday, December 2, 2011

One Grey Night It Happened...

Thoughts on Playing

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giants' rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar

L Lipton & P Yarrow

With clarity I can recall the moment I realised I had forgotten how to play. The date and my exact age I don’t know, that wasn’t important. The important thing was a moment of awareness in which I knew my approach to life had changed and there was no going back. I was eleven or twelve, towards the end of primary school, possibly even in high school already, so

I assume my ability to play in the way a child plays had been fading slowly for the last few years, just so slowly I hadn’t really noticed. Perhaps it was in an effort to hold on to it that Laura and I sat down on my bedroom floor and set out in front of us our combined collection of 14 Pollypockets[1]. With ritualistic solemnity we laid out our miniature world that stretched from a farm in the west, through to a city shopping strip, a Chinese style garden, and finally to the beach in the east (I realise now that there, on my bedroom floor and encased in candy pink and purple plastic, we had created a replica NSW). With directorial precision we placed our characters into the scene, carefully reminding ourselves of where each of those little plastic figurines were at in their own life story, sitting them at tables with their parents or perhaps in the school room, or driving a tractor through the farm. I’m fairly certain it took over an hour. And then we sat there and looked at the little world before us. Then we looked at each other. Then one of us suggested we pack it all away again, because we no longer knew what to do with them. And that’s when I knew that a phase of my life was gone.

I had been a girl who had the ability to name herself Jo Katar and write a ridiculous story called Heigh Ho I like the Sea, to hang out with a pair of invisible lasses named Fordy and Tsinka, to invent a back story for every single doll she owned, to be known as Betty or Sarah dependant on what shoes she wore. Suddenly those skills became redundant, shameful even.

The thing that I find curious now is that I see great value in being able to play the way children do and sometimes I want it back. In assigning a type of play to a phase of life, have I limited my ability to have fun now? Matthew and a group of his friends play dungeon and dragons, and as much as I realise I should probably be horrified by such a nerdy activity, I find myself insanely jealous because I can not even begin to imagine how, as an adult, I would go about playing an imagination game. Sure, I can play scrabble, and at a push I might play chess or monopoly, or possibly even Carcassonne, but I feel these games are different. There are rules, and a playing board and a set goal like desperately not letting Rachelle beat me by over 400 points. Sorry, um, a set goal like gaining points through cleverly placing words on a board. And, with perhaps the exception if Carcassonne they don’t really require my imagination, my working of a character, my involvement in a story.

Now, as someone who works in theatre, has performed in community theatre and graduated from a degree with a creative writing major, I obviously don’t, or at least shouldn’t, have a problem with using my imagination, developing a character or becoming involved in a story. I don’t even have a problem with these things being fun, or a type of playing. I realise that for some people, say professional performers, play and work are very similar things. Maybe I’ve relegated creative and imaginative play to certain arenas, in places where it is also work and is therefore an acceptable thing. For play to lead to an obvious end result which is somehow useful, if only as entertainment for others then that is fine. To play simply to play, to have fun seems strange and is something I think I turned away from.

Its ok, for me, as an adult person to engage in activities reminiscent of childhood play, as long as it is for the grown up purpose of productivity rather than the childhood purpose of having fun. I can be creative and imaginative as long as I’m also working and seeing a production move from rehearsal to performance or a story move from notes on a page to a re-worked draft, as long as I’m expanding my mind by reading Jane Austen or George Eliot or watching a play or listening to Mozart. But sitting down and playing, for the sake of playing, for the sake of having fun seems foreign to me, and that makes me a bit sad. I worry that in my haste to be a grown up, did I throw out my ability to have fun as well as my ability to play? Is this why I find it so hard to have a night off and do nothing and actually enjoy it? Is this why the concept of going on a holiday reduces me to a state of panic, stress and tears? How can I enjoy a week gone by where I am not somehow contributed, been productive, made money, but had fun and been imaginative and creative for no reason other than it is enjoyable.

Why was I in such a rush to distance myself from childhood activities? I think I assumed that if I set aside my dolls and got on with this growing up business I would become a real person. A valid person. I think of Jackie Paper and his childhood companion Puff, The Magic Dragon. When Jackie Paper grows up it is Puff who feels the sadness. It is Puff who hangs his head, and slinks into his cave, with his green scales falling like rain. Yet, in my case it is me who is now mourning the loss of my ability to play, to invent and imagine. I had always assumed that we should believe Jackie went off and had a great time. But perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he missed his adventures on the high seas just as much as Puff did.

I wonder how many sullen, sleepy dragons all us adults have hidden in the caves of our minds and hearts that could do with a good waking up. I wonder how many I have, and who they all are, and if I found them and woke them, would I actually unleash a whole stack of creative potential, energy and joy. Its possibly I may even relearn how to play and embrace opportunities to have fun.


[1]Laura, I’m still really sorry that I broke your Pollypocket clock tower. I recognise that I should not have run down the hall with it in my outstretched hands, giving it the opportunity to test out the wings it didn’t have.